Do you have a smartphone, tablet or PC? I suspect you have, otherwise I’m not sure why you’d read my emails!
Well, if you have got a smartphone, tablet or PC, then it has a screen. And chances are at times it gets a little bit dusty or dirty.
And after talking about cases for phones and tablets last time, a few people asked me about how you should clean the screen.
In good, time-honoured tech question fashion, the answer is “it depends”.
If it’s just a bit of dust, you can just wipe it over gently with a dusting cloth.
More often you’ll find you’ve got fingerprints or smears from your fingers on it. After all, you can hardly avoid getting fingerprints on something you use with your fingertips!
The best thing for that is to get a microfibre cloth – just the type you get in all sorts of homeware shops or supermarkets. (I bought mine in Wilkinsons.)
Then use that (dry) to gently polish the screen until it removes the fingerprints.
What if the screen is more dirty than that? When my boys use our iPad, it often ends up with the screen filthy – I really don’t know how they do it!
For that, turn the device off and make sure it really has turned off. Make sure it’s not plugged into the mains – or anything else. Then take a microfibre cloth and make a part of it damp – just slightly.
Then wipe the screen gently with that, making sure you don’t go over any openings (the speaker, microphone or any sockets) with the damp bit of the cloth.
Once it’s clean use a dry bit of the cloth to dry it off – and then once it’s fully dry (and your hands are!) you can turn it on again.
You can get special screen cleaning wipes but to be honest I’ve never found they work particularly well – in some cases they leave marks on the screen from the cleaning fluid on them, so I’m not a big fan!
Oh, and don’t use paper towels or “blue roll” to wipe it – or any window cleaner solution or things like that – they can damage the screen.
It is worth doing every so often, especially with a touch-screen. When I clean our iPad screen it not only looks better, but the touch-screen is smoother and nicer to use.
Using Tablets – the crux of the matter…
Have you ever had someone explain something complicated just by talking to you… maybe talking quickly… and afterwards, you just can’t understand what it was they were trying to say.
Or you more or less understand it, but later on realise there are parts you don’t quite remember.
With explaining how to do things on the tablet or any other tech gadget, having a picture of what’s going on could help – and that’s why we also use pictures of the screen in our books.
But what would really help is if I showed you what to do, so you could see me doing it.
Even then, far too many people explaining things tend to go far too fast, whizzing through things at a million miles an hour so you don’t have the chance to take it in.
That’s the difference with the videos in Tablets Made Simple. They show you exactly how to do it and they go at a sensible speed, explaining things properly as they go. That way you can follow it so it finally makes sense.
Not only that, you can pause a video while you try it out, if you like. Or rewind to watch the same bit if it didn’t quite make sense. Or come back and watch it again as many times as you like the next day. Up to you.
It’s not just video – sometimes it’s helpful to explain things in writing as well or to give you a handful of tips to practice what you’ve just discovered… so that’s included too.
All in all, I think if you’ve ever struggled with your tablet (whether it’s an iPad or an Android tablet), this could be exactly what you need. Best find out more (including how to join – it’s quick and easy) here.