No precautions have been taken to store the computer. It is sitting upstairs on a bookshelf. It is an HP pavilion laptop.  I read this . I don't understand if this computer will classify as rarely used or unused? The article describes a unused computer as not having been used for years. Is it on the border in between rarely used and unused.  Would the computer be reliable enough to use for school work considering the fact that it hasn't been used at all?  Do you think it would suddenly crash and be rendered unusable?  If it is possible for there to be problems, what should I look out for, and how severe do you think the problems are likely to be.  Will the battery life or the battery in general be adversely affected?
120520
I have an opportunity to buy a brand new (sealed box) EliteBook 8470p laptop for a good price.  The date of manufacture goes back to around March 2013, which is bang on two years ago.  Given that it's been two years, what state will the supplied Lithium-Ion battery be in? Still usable?
34041
I'm travelling to LAX and from some anecdotal horror stories I've seen online and in real life, I worry that customs officers may ask to search my laptop, seize it indefinitely and/or possibly clone the hard drive seeing as I've read that they have power to inspect you and every item when entering/leaving the United States.  I have a significant amount of pornography (all legal) on my laptop which I wonder would I have to declare to the officers as other countries such as Australia make travellers declare on arrival.
37594
A few days ago I got a laptop that had spilled coffee on it. I did dry it, cleaned it as much as possible (with with dry paper towels) and let it dry in a warm place.  The laptop works fine, even thought I had to replace the keyboard. What's needed is to clean the fans, because sugar being sticky, can attract dust particles and make fans work slower or even stop.  The question is: Can water with sugar do anything bad to the motherboard in the long run? Is it possible to stop after 1 month for example. If yes, why and what should I do to further protect it?  Ps: I didn't find anything relevant to  tag
95343
Is it normally safe to replace a laptop SSD without unplugging the battery?  I wish to replace the SSD on my Samsung NP900XCE, which required me to remove the entire back panel. So far so good, but unfortunately I failed to remove three of the screws holding the battery in place. The heads (Philips) got a bit damaged by my attempt.  I did manage to remove the screws holding the mSata SSD in place, so physically I can replace it, but I'm afraid of damaging the motherboard or SSD if I replace the SSD with the battery still attached. I suspect that the laptop is never completely turned off while the battery is still attached. One indication of this is that the charge level of the battery drops with about 5 % per week even when I'm not using the laptop at all. I'm not using sleep mode or anything, but the laptop is really fast at booting.  There is a small button on the battry for "Emergency cutoff" of the battery power, in case water is spilled on the laptop. But the manual says:  "Do not cut the battery power under normal conditions. This may result in data loss or a product malfunction."  Supposedly, "if you connect the AC adapter, the battery power will be supplied again", but I'm not to keen on testing if it works...
82918
When your laptop's battery is 100% charged, should you leave it plugged in so any battery power doesn't get used, or will that cause overcharging, overheating, etc.? Should the laptop be unplugged when the battery level is 100%?  I'm asking because my laptop's screen tends to get dim when unplugged, so I don't like to run it on battery.
48677
I'm new to the world of Apple, I bought a new Macbook Pro, mid-2020, Intel i7, 16GB RAM. I'm a developer, I run apps like VS Code, Sublime Text, Slack, Chrome (Multiple Windows), I play videos/songs in the background. I have been keeping a track of the energy consumption on my Mac, and it only runs for 4 hours. I have reset my SMC after I upgraded to Big Sur. Is 4 hours normal? or should I go to the service center? Update on 3 Feb 2021: I submitted my Mac to the Apple service center they said they conducted a few tests and the conclusion was that the battery is fine (I don't know what type of test they did). So I guess I'll be using it on AC Update on 12 Feb 2021: Took it to the service center, they didn't find any issues so I started using Safari for work and my battery has improved by 1 hour on Average.
62440
My girlfriend bought a laptop last week. It's a core 2 duo with 4 GB  We installed vista 64bit, and one of the first things we did was right click on "My computer" to see gthe properties. Immediately we noticed something strange about her RAM, the line said: Installed memory (RAM): 4,00 GB (3,68 GB usable)  I told her not to worry, thinking it must be something about the laptop hardware (considering her vista installation came from the same DVD as mine, and I never noticed anything like that on my 4 GB desktop). One hour ago, it got worse. We looked at Properties again, and it now says: Installed memory (RAM): 4,00 GB (2,98 GB usable)  What does that mean? Are those 1,02 GB missing or being used by the system?  EDIT: There is a possibility that the sytem information is wrong. I just noticed that it reports an intel T6500 processor, when it's actually a T6400.  How can I find out how much RAM is really available to the system?  EDIT2: Checking the resource monitors, it says 1003 MB are reserved for the hardware. Is that good or bad? Thanks
85614
I am not very good with electricity so I can only guess. So should i be careful with screws and stuff when the pc is on?
89263
, I'm starting to believe it is not active.  Last night I started up Task Manager and I see 2 disks - Disk 0 (C:) and Disk 1.    Disk 0 appears to be active -    Disk 1 appears to be not active.  It's been this way for at least 3 hours of active use, both Metro and Desktop use.   This is supposed to be the Solid State part of my Hybrid Drive, but it doesn't seem to be doing anything, at least not from the perspective of the Task Manager tool.  Does anyone know of any additional tools that I could you for analysis or do you know if there is some way to activate this part of the drive?  Thank you in advance!
110103
The battery back-up (BBU) model:   admin enables write-back cache with BBU writes are cached to the RAID controller's RAM (major performance benefit) the battery saves uncommitted and cached data in the event of a power loss (reliability)   If I lose power and come back within a day or so, my data should be both complete and uncorrupted.  The downside to this is that, if the battery is dead or low, OR EVEN IF IT IS IN A RELEARN CYCLE (drain/charge loops to ensure the battery's health), the controller reverts to write-through mode and performance will suffer.  What's more, the relearn cycles are usually automated on a schedule which may or may not happen in the middle of big traffic.  So, that has to be manually disabled and manually scheduled for off-hours if it's a concern.  Annoying either way.  NV caches have capacitors with a sufficient charge to commit any uncommitted-to-disk data to flash.  Not only is that more survivable in longer loss situations, but you don't have to concern yourself with battery death, wear-out, or relearning.  All of that sounds great to me.  What doesn't sound great to me is the prospect of that flash module having an issue, though.  What if it's completely hosed?  What if it's only partially hosed?  A bit corrupted at the edges?  Relearn cycles can tell when something like a simple battery is failing, but is there a similar process to verify that the flash is functional?  I'm just far more trusting of a battery, warts and all.  I know the card's RAM can fail, the card itself can fail - that's common territory, though.  In case you didn't guess, yeah, I've experienced a shocking-to-me amount of flash/SSD/etc. failure :)
41657
This morning I went to turn on a family member's laptop to find the SMART message displaying that the laptop's hard disk is close to failure and needs replacing.   The laptop is around 2 years old now and I have now backed everything up just in case of this 'imminent' failure.   I ran the HDTune programme to test the amount of damaged blocks there are in the hard disk.  This resulted in 24/2500 blocks (1%)  To me, (someone who doesn't know a great deal about computer hardware) this doesn't seem like a very large amount and I am not entirely sure where to go from here.   Shall I just suggest to immediately buy a new hard drive for the laptop as this one will just keep on deteriorating?  Or, as everything is now backed up, keep on using the laptop until the inevitable happens which could be; days, weeks or months, as this laptop isn't really used for anything majorly important?  Thanks in advance,  JD
39498
I would like my laptop to hibernate itself when the battery level is 10% to be sure it has enough power to complete the operation properly. Actually if I don't pay attention my laptop informs me it will hibernate when it's too late, so instead it brutally shuts down. This kills lithium batteries and is not acceptable.
121756
My friends say that it should actually improve the cooling since there is more air available to it, especially the CPU fan. I have to admit that it at least looks like it would stay cooler.  I disagree. It should prevent the case fans from effectively running fast-moving air across the components, right? As for the CPU fan, the air around it isn't being refreshed as much with the case open, I think, so it's getting hotter, so the CPU cooling isn't as effective. Not that it would kill the computer, but it seems to me that it would make the cooling less efficient.  Who's right? This is about settling an argument, not trying to solve a real problem. The computer in question is a custom-made "1337 gaming b0x0r r!g" (you know the type) school computer with like 8 fans that's being used right now to make graphene using a LightScribe DVD burner (not a heavy task), and its case is open. The key here is that it has a good-quality case, and we can't try heat tests on it.
23493
For the last 1.5 years I've tended to put my laptop in sleep mode rather than turn it off. Recently I started to feel it's not as fast as it was when I bought it, even if I restore a fresh Windows 7 image (I made it 1 week after installing the system for the first time).  Maybe it's just an impression, I'm not sure...   Can it be a result of putting my laptop in sleep mode? What computer parts get worn down over time? Is there software to test if these parts are worn?
117650
If a Hard Disk Drive has a head that depends on complete accuracy to read, how can a laptop function if it  is moving?  Is the HDD head strong enough to stay stable and read while the entire laptop is moving?  Is it possible for the head to impact the disk?  If so, what would happen?  Basically, I'm just curious if it's bad to have a laptop running while you move it around  Any answers, insight or corrections are appreciated, thanks!
108067
Often I have a lot of stuff open and don't feel like shutting down my laptop, so I just use sleep mode when I'm transferring it. But I have no idea if this might have any disadvantages.  So my question: are there technical considerations that would make it detrimental to put your computer in sleep mode every time?  Associated implications:   Would any such issues be mitigated by turning off my computer every once in a while?  Is continuous use of sleep mode known to slow down a system in any way, and for what technical reason if so?  Is continuous use of sleep mode known to cause any long-term side effects, and for what technical reason if so??   FYI I'm using Windows 7 on a laptop.
84857
I've been  on battery cycle counts and checked out my current count on my MacBook (13-inch, Aluminum, Late 2008) - recommended maximum cycle count is 500.  I've had this laptop now for over 4 years and at the 2 year mark I had the battery replaced by AppleCare. The first time I checked out the cycle count was today and it's currently on 1004. Now my question is, is this the cycle count of the battery since I replaced it (as in, it reads the cycle count from the battery), or is it the combined cycle count (as in, it stores the count somewhere and increments occasionally)? My assumption is that it's the count of that battery but I have no idea how to verify this.  Either way, it looks like I need a new battery ;)