The computer's biggest enemy is heat build-up. The easiest way to keep your computer from burning out is to make sure that your computer has adequate ventilation. Make an effort to keep dust out of your computer. You can take the cover off and blow any dust from the computers innards using a can of compressed air that you can buy at an office supply or computer store. Avoid placing your computer in direct sunlight.
Sunlight can make the monitor difficult to read, and it can heat up the computer.
Remember, cooler is better. I'm talking about keeping the hard disk clean and healthy. If you are running Windows 95 or later, you have some built-in tools that you can use to help maintain your computer. If you are running MS-DOS or an older version of Microsoft Windows, you also have some hard disk maintenance utilities available to you, but they are beyond the scope of this book. After you put a file on your hard disk, your computer dumps the file in the first available spot.