6 tips to increase the life of your IT equipment

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Maintaining your company's IT equipment is an easy and convenient way to save money, with potentially significant financial impact.

But this maintenance is also a good way to act for the planet!

Indeed, a computer that lasts longer is a computer that does not need to be replaced. However, many studies show that the manufacture of computer equipment has the most negative impact on the environment. 

Maintaining your company's IT assets is therefore also a concrete action to be valued as part of your CSR approach.

To help you make your IT interview more effective, check out the list of 6 handy tips the Rzilient team has put together for you 🙂

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Tip #1: Preserve your battery 🔋

Is your laptop showing a notification that your battery is low? Don't wait any longer, plug it in to recharge it!

Also remember to remove the battery from the laptop at least once a week, so that the battery can discharge completely on a regular basis.

With these two tips, your batteries will last much longer.

As a reminder, the cost of a battery ranges from 25 to 100 €. Avoiding having to replace it too often is a good source of savings.

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Tip #2: Turn off your IT equipment every night 📴

Everyone needs a rest, even your computer hardware!

Indeed, if you remember to turn off your computer and its peripherals every night, when you leave your office, you will avoid :

• Overuse of electronic components, which wear out over time;
• The extra electricity consumption associated with keeping appliances on standby.

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And this overconsumption is not anecdotal. According to Ademe, a computer on standby consumes 20 to 40% of its operating power!

To illustrate this statistic, let's take a more telling example. If your company's computer park has 100 devices, which remain on standby all night, this is equivalent to leaving 20 to 40 machines running 24 hours a day!

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In financial terms, this represents an electricity expense of about €100 per year, per machine.

This tip offers you a double impact: 

• Financial : you save several thousand euros per year in electricity;
• Environmental : you use less energy.

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Tip #3: Air out your computer 💨

Let's continue, if you will, dear reader, with the anthropomorphic analogies! Your computer also needs to breathe. ‍

Moreover, without a ventilation system, the electronic components of your computer equipment do not last very long.

That's why it's crucial to keep the ventilation grilles of your machine clear.

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Here are our practical tips: 

• Regularly clean the ventilation areas of all machines in the company;
• Invite your teams to use booster seats, to allow for proper ventilation of the equipment.

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In addition to ventilation, it is advisable to keep the work area where you install your computer equipment clean.

Indeed, dust can get into the computer, which has an impact on its performance and exposes you to the risk of overheating the hardware.

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Tip #4: Take care of your equipment ⚠️

Where your computer differs from you is that it doesn't need to eat or drink 🙂

We therefore advise you toavoid getting too close to your computer with drinks or food, in order to limit the risk of dropping them.

More generally, when handling or moving computer equipment, be careful. Dropping them or banging them against a wall can seriously damage them.

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Tip #5: Protect your computer from the inside out 🔒

Inside your computer, it is also useful to take precautions so that it does not suffer from problems on a software level.

To do this, here are our tips:

• Choose a secure password;
• Use a computer cleaning program, such as CCleaner, to rid your machine of unwanted or no longer needed files;
• Use a powerful anti-virus software to prevent your computer from being infected by any malicious software. To go further on the subject, consult our article on cybersecurity, a key issue for organizations;
• Train your teams in good practices in terms of using and securing their machines and the software installed on them;
• Update the operating systems (OS ) on all the machines in your IT fleet to prevent security breaches and optimize performance. See our article on the importance of regularly updating your OS.

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Tip #6: Plan to Rule! 🗓️

In a busy work day, computer maintenance often goes by the wayside.

To avoid this, we recommend that you schedule a recurring task (on a monthly basis at least) of 15 minutes dedicated to the maintenance of your machine.

It is a good investment of your time 🙂

Indeed, if your computer is down, you lose hours to organize yourself to be able to continue your work, or to wait for a repair to be made. This can jeopardize the deadlines you have committed to for your professional projects!

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Conclusion: effective maintenance requires simple actions

Maintaining your company's IT equipment means saving money and helping the planet. Moreover, it doesn't require any effort or special skills, you just have to think about it.

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And to ensure that the practices we have suggested in this article are adopted by your teams, we recommend:

• Organize awareness-raising activities (such as the Fresque du Numérique, to discover the challenges of digital technology and the environmental impacts of the sector);
• To propose training workshops, in short format, to present the best practices to your employees.

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And if your equipment still needs to be changed, don't worry! Rzilient helps you to find the best reconditioned equipment at the best prices, thanks to our network of specialized partners.

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Finally, RZilient's teams are actively working on developing our new solution, IT Room, which anticipates breakdowns upstream, thanks to an advanced AI. It detects the weak signals that indicate a risk of failure, even before it occurs!

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