By Linda Lindquist, Keeping Your Computer Healthy
Here in Florida, many of our resident are ‘snowbirds’. They live in Florida during the winter months and go north during the summer months. They have the best weather in both locations. Many snowbirds have computer equipment in both of their ‘home’ locations.
There are a few things to do to get ready to go north:
- Call your internet and phone service providers and place your services on ‘vacation mode’. This will save you money while you are away.
- To protect your electronics from being zapped by lightning during the summer Florida thunderstorms, turn off and unplug your electronic equipment: TVs, printers, computers, modem/routers. If you are stopping your internet or TV services, unplug the boxes and return them to your service provider.
- Do not just turn off your surge protectors. This leaves your devices totally unprotected from surges in electricity. Unplug the surge protector from the wall.
- Take the ink cartridges out of your printer, put them in a zip lock bag, and put the bag in the refrigerator. Houses get hot during the summer and ink cartridges dry out. This trick may give you more life from your ink when you return.
- When you get north, if you are using the same computer or laptop, there are a few steps to reconnect your service to use (do the same when you return to Florida):
- Connect your laptop or computer to your current internet wi-fi service
- Configure your current printer to be the default printer
- If your cooling system has a humidistat on the thermostat, turn it onto away and 70 degrees. This turns cooling on when the humidity exceeds 70 degrees. This will save you money and protect your home from dampness and mold during the summer months.
