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Do you own a car? Do you change its oil? Rotate its tires? Get it tuned up every so often?

Why?

You do these things because they are preventative maintenance. The minor cost involved in performing these simple duties on a regular basis keeps your vehicle running smoothly longer.

I’ve found, though, that few small business owners give their computers and servers the same kind of respect.  I think much of the reason that people don’t perform regular computer maintenance is simply laziness.  Just like so many other things in life we do, we put off or avoid things like this.

I suspect that you, like most computer users, may also neglect these things simply because you don’t have the faintest idea what needs to be done. Computers aren’t simple machines, and hey, they don’t even come with manuals anymore!

Computer professionals are a lot like doctors in this respect. We keep up with the latest and greatest so that you don’t have to. We encounter more computer problems in one day than you are likely to in your entire lifetime. And, we learn how to solve those problems.

It’s our job to keep our clients’ computers running smoothly. Plus, we’re usually fanatics about our own computers. We’re sort of like the car mechanic that fixes other peoples’ cars all day, and then goes home and works on the hot rod at night.

Most business owners completely avoid this process of preventative computer maintenance altogether.

I know because 90 percent of all the calls I get are to repair problems, not prevent them.

And guess what?

Most of the problems I see could have easily been avoided with the proper preventative maintenance.

Smoke detectors are cheaper than fire engines!

Just last week we were onsite with a client who DOES have us come in and perform quarterly maintenance on their network.  Fortunately, our engineer found a failed hard drive in the server.  This was quickly remedied and replaced (under warranty), without the business having any downtime.  Had this issue not been spotted, the story could have been much different.

I can’t urge you enough have a professional IT company take care of your computers in a very proactive, preventative manner. Check your hardware on a regular basis. Failing fans and hard drives are avoidable.

Just like many diseases, most computer problems have symptoms that can be spotted before a problem becomes serious. Catching them early will almost always be more economical than the costs associated with emergency service calls, downed computers, lost employee productivity, lost data and repairs could ever be.

If I change just one thing about how you think about your computer system, I’d like it to be this point.  Remember the old saying “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure” and apply it to your computer systems.

Spend the extra time and money to get your systems maintained properly by someone who really knows what needs to be done. In the long run, you’ll save money by avoiding catastrophic emergencies.