Not just the maintenance of your files/content, though that is definately one of the top things you need to do in order to keep it in good shape. The main thing that I have done to keep my computer from crashing is to simply spend the extra few bucks on the better part. The quality of the build, and the parts that you put in your computer is what keeps it ticking.
My computer changes it's appearance/performance every few months, so I've never really had many problems with parts dying on me. And there's also the fact that when computer manufacturers put their computers together, they use one main brand name (AMD/Pentium), slap that logo on the computer, and suddenly the market base see's it as a "good" computer. That's not the true story though. I have seen more than my fair share of manufactured computer's having their power supply's die. And when I open up the computer to take my look-see, I notice that nearly all of the parts have no brand names on them. The RAM, the PSU's, even sometimes the MOBO's will be crap. And from that I conclude that's the problem with most PC's today.
It's hard to beat the prices of manufacturing company's today. Unlike 2-3 years ago, where you could build your own computer and save some serious cash... nowadays, most company's buy in major bulk, severely cutting down on the price per single component. And although alot of these manufacturing company's provide a valid (good) warranty for their products... that still doesnt change the quality of their components.
If I had one guess why that computer was acting up, I would say that the part's in it werent too good to begin with, ontop of being 2 year's old. Also take into fact that your friend before hand may have never formatted the hdd, and the clutter could severely be hurting the cache.
So to sum up pretty much everything I just said. If you want a PC that will last a long time, that won't crash/bsod/error... you'll want quality components, and you'll need to take care of it more than you would a mac.
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