We use our cars every day, and we use them hard. Stop-and-go traffic, accelerating and then hitting the brakes. Weighing the vehicle down with passengers and cargo. It's a lot of wear and tear.
But even if we treated our automobiles with tender, loving care; just over time they fall into gradual disrepair. The very act of driving wears down gears and belts, uses up fluids, and generates gunk and rust. It just comes with use.
If we don't bring our cars into the mechanic every so often they're bound to fail on us. Eventually all those "minor issues" just accumulate and eventually can bring the entire vehicle to its knees (or hub caps). Regular maintenance is just a necessity when you want a fully functional, everyday machine.
So why wouldn't you do the same for your computer?
General Wear and Tear
You probably use your computer more than you do your car. Sure, you might commute for an hour or two to work each day, plus some driving for errands or eating out. Let's just be generous and assume you drive for four hours a day.
But while you're at work, or at home checking email/Facebook, you're using your computer. Work is usually eight or more hours. Home can be another six. That's all time mostly spent on a computer.
You may not drive your computer through dust, smog, rain, and mud; but you certainly download hundreds of files, store thousands more, and multitask with at least half a dozen programs at a time. And that's not even taking into account heavy work like video editing, graphics design, or gaming. Or weathering intrusion attempts from who-knows-how-many viruses and other malware.
Computers are quite the work horse, and we ride them hard. And their loads never lighten, only increase. We fill that giant hard drive ("A terabyte? How will I ever fill all that up?") to capacity. So is it any wonder they start to slow down?
You know where to take your car when its performance starts to sag, the auto mechanic. The same principle applies to computers: they need general maintenance too. But you don't have to take it to some person, you can use free or paid utilities to do all the work for you. You just need to press a button. But what does each button do? Here's a breakdown of common things taken care of by "computer maintenance" programs.
Computer Space
Like a car that performs better the emptier it is, your computer runs better when it has more room in its long-term storage memory (hard disk drive, solid-state drive, flash memory) and in its random-access-memory (RAM). Your computer is constantly doing lots of stuff, even when you're not telling it to do anything, so the more room it has to do this stuff the better it can accomplish everything.
The more memory that's taken up, the less room your machine has to function. And if there's not enough room to do everything at once things slow down because it has to start prioritizing.
So, to help with this issue it's important to clear out your:
Temporary files: Your computer writes/rewrites data. A lot. Whenever it's doing "something" it's writing a file. Whenever you copy a line of text, it writes a temp file. It keeps a daily cache of information that is currently in use for better efficiency. Usually your computer dumps these temp files, but not always. Over time they can accumulate, like gunk. And gunk needs to be cleared out every once in awhile, otherwise it can clog things up.
Temporary Internet Files: Similar in principle to your computer's temporary files, only these are specifically downloaded from the Internet. Every thing you see on a webpage, including this one, exists as a set of files. Every image, every CSS style-sheet, every background graphic, it all has to be downloaded to your machine first. And then there's every file you've ever downloaded from a website like a photo, mp3, or funny cat image. Some you save, some your don't. But you still have that copy, somewhere. They accumulate over time as well, and need to be cleared.
The Trash/Recycle Bin: When you delete a file, it's not actually deleted. It's just sent to this little "holding tank" where it is effectively quarantined off from the rest of your computer. It can't be accessed from inside the bin, but it's still taking up space. Don't let the trash fill up too much.
Programs: It's always a good idea to look through your list of installed programs and look for ones you don't use anymore. Uninstalling them frees up valuable room and resources. Also it's good to keep track of what programs normally exist on your machine; in case some malware hits you and installs something you'll be able to quickly weed them out.
Computer Performance
Like a car, you can't make a computer run faster unless you physically change out its parts. But like how using better and cleaner fluids can help a car run more efficiently, and thereby perform better, you can do the following to keep your computer always functioning at its optimal.
Registry Issues: This only ails Windows users, but is still quite commonplace. The Windows registry stores all the configuration settings and options within your Windows operating system, and subsequently all the programs you use within it. Over time, redundant registries accumulate; or as you uninstall programs some leftover registries are left. To help streamline performance (and general clutter), these excess registries should be pruned out.
Note: because the registry is so crucial to how your computer works, it should always be backed up before making any changes to it, and should not be manually edited except by those with advanced knowledge of it. Leave the action to the maintenance programs, and the good ones give you the option of backing up the registry first.
Start-up Programs: Certain programs run as soon as your operating system (Windows, Mac OS, Linux flavor) boots up. Some of these programs don't help with the general functionality of your OS, just with their parent programs. Others admittedly do important things, leave those alone. But the rest are usually trivial, and you can normally do without them. Each start-up program adds to the boot-up time of your OS; it's one more thing it has to load. If your operating system is taking too long to boot, then maybe you need to disable some of your extraneous start-up programs.
Defragging: As stated before, your computer writes/rewrites data a lot. And in the interests of speed, it doesn't always do it sequentially. It writes wherever it can find space, like a student frantically filling in whatever margins they can find in their notebook as their math professor speaks. When your computer goes back to read this information, it's pretty good at finding all the various bits, wherever they are scattered, and compiling it as needed. But if there's a lot of data all jumbled about everywhere, it can gradually take longer to find the information it needs.
Defragging makes your computer look at all its data, then re-shuffle everything until it's all sequential and much easier to find. This lets your computer spend less time "working" and more time "doing." Modern operating systems tend to do this automatically in the background whenever idle, so this is becoming less of a regular concern for users.
Maintenance Programs
There are many free and paid versions of maintenance programs that will handle most, if not all, the above issues. Usually your operating system itself has some built-in utilities for cleaning out temp files, defragging, and uninstalling programs. But getting a reliable, well-made third-party program usually means it's more specialized to the task, and often has features or scanning depth greater than those default programs.
Here's a list of maintenance programs I recommend from peers and personal experience, not endorsement:
CCleaner: This free utility is great at clearing out gunk files and uninstalling programs at a glance. It has expanded over the years to include a registry cleaner (with backups), configure your start-up programs, organize your system restore points, and even wipe hard drives. A must-get.
Revo Uninstaller: CCleaner can uninstall programs, but essentially works off the OS's own program roster. Some programs can be a bit more stubborn to remove, or leave lots of bits behind that can still clutter up your system. Revo is a specialized program that not only uninstalls other programs, but scans and can remove every trace of them from anywhere in your system; from hidden user settings to even the registry. It is the most thorough free uninstaller there is.
System Mechanic: This is an all-in-one commercial utility that does pretty much everything. You pay for the convenience of having everything under one roof, but it is a good all-around program; especially if you don't want to use several different programs at once.
Taking Care of What Matters
Running these programs and their tools at least once a week, if not a few times a month, will keep your computer running at its most optimal. Of course, using good anti-malware programs and good surfing habits will also keep real nasties and bugs from wreaking havoc on your system, too. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
And there comes a certain pride in knowing your machine's innards and cleaning them yourself. It's like car aficienados who like to work on their vehicles themselves. We spend so much time with computers now that they are practically a part of us, so why shouldn't we get to know them and take care of them?
It'd be like not bothering to take care of yourself.
What are some of your favorite maintenance programs?