Infopackets Reader Bev C. writes:

" Dear Dennis,

I laughed out loud when the subject line of your newsletter, 'Dusting the Computer from the Inside?'. The funny thing is that I just dusted the inside my computer last night -- literally!

As it turns out, HDD Health (freeware), alerted me late yesterday with a warning that my hard drive temperature was close to critical. So I shut down, opened case and left it to cool.

Later on, I inspected the inside of the computer case. That's when I noticed that dust had built up (considerably) on my power supply vents and on my CPU. In fact, darn near everything inside the computer was coated with dust!

After replacing an expensive dead power supply once and suspecting it might have been because of dust build-up, I check inside my PC periodically. Coincidentally, my last 'check up' was last spring, so I figured I was due.

Your article about Dusting the Computer was a different kind of 'dusting', but thought it might be good to remind the unwary that dust does collect inside those cases and really can cause serious problems. But it CAN be cleaned (hint: compressed air in a can works wonders -- but do it outdoors)!

Being about 10 years older than your previous writer and self-taught on computer, I rely on the wonderful people like you who share knowledge for free. For many of us that is the only price we can reasonably afford to keep on using and enjoying these complicated but wondrous machines which allow us to keep in touch with distant family and friends, save photos and music we treasure, and generally keep our brains in gear and running.

Thank you, Dennis! You're one of my sanity savers. "

My response:

You're welcome and thanks for the tip ;-)

As a reminder, my method of "dusting the computer from the inside" is from a different perspective, as Bev pointed out. If you missed yesterday's article, you can read it online the site:

Dusting the Computer from the Inside?