After hours of grueling work, your laptop starts to make terrifying whirring noises, it overheats and then suddenly all of your applications slow to a frustrating halt. No matter how many times you restart, no matter how many times you clean up your desktop, or close tabs on your browser – eventually you’ll be faced with the hum of your laptop fan, followed by all of your programs slowing to a painful crawl.
As frustrating as it can be to deal with a consistently noisy and slow laptop, it can be even more irritating to not know the reason behind your lagging laptop. Before you make one more trip to the Genius Bar or make an emergency call to the Geek Squad, you might want to know what’s really causing your computer to run so slowly.
WFTS, a news television station in Tampa, Florida recently spoke with one of the Geek Squad guys at Best Buy, Adam Silkey, to uncover the reasons that a computer may be a bit more sluggish than usual. Not surprisingly, Silkey explained that the typical culprits are unused apps and temporary internet files – however one of the most common reasons is pretty cringe-worthy.
Silkey explains, “A lot of dust, food, and other junk builds up in your computer and especially your fans inside your computer. Those are what keeps your computer cool and keeps it speedy.” Curious about all that dust and “other junk” that gets built up in your laptop? It’s loads of dead skin cells, reports WFTS. The news channel states, “That’s right, dust, which is mainly dead human skin, is one of the top offenders for slowing down your computer.”
Silkey suggests regularly using cans of compressed air to clean out all of those sloughed off dead skin cells. While we’d never suggest that you cut back on exfoliation (it’s good for you!) there are measures you can take to minimize the amount of dead skin cells that shed while you’re using your laptop. Joshua Zeichner, director of cosmetic and clinical research at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City, suggests using a petroleum based moisturizer to slow down the amount of shedding your skin does. He also suggests wearing long pants while using your laptop to reduce the amount of bare skin contact.
