How to take care of your laptop

Your laptop is an expensive piece of equipment, you need to take care of it. If your child owns one, show them this article so they can practice good technique in protecting expensive hardware. There is more than you think to just protecting the outer shell of your laptop.

Protect the hardware

Your laptop is expensive. Don’t just carry it around without a laptop carrying case. A carrying case of some sort for a laptop will ensure that if you drop it, it won’t break! Plus it’s just easier to carry around in. This is the easiest most preventable way to protect your laptop. If your break the hardware, then you broke the software too, because you can no longer access it.

Shut your laptop down

Your laptop should be shut down after each time you use it. This prevents overheating (which can easily melt components within your laptop) and in general just makes your laptop last longer, as it causes less stress on the parts. When your laptop overheats you can receive software failures and if it’s on a cloth surface, you can start a fire or even worst get burnt.

Yes, it’s a laptop, but it shouldn’t go in your lap. Laptops tend to get host fast and you can burn yourself pretty badly by keeping the laptop in your lap. Also don’t sit in bed with a laptop, if you fall asleep with your laptop on and it falls onto the covers, it could cause a fire. Not to mention it WILL overheat and this can damage components over time.

Shut down your laptop correctly

Lots of people simply hold down the power button to shut off their laptop really quick. While this isn’t terrible for the laptop, it can cause some bad issues. It’s better to go through the shut down via your desktop then using a hardware button. Using the “Power button” shuts off power instantly. You can lose documents you were working on, or the worst, your OS could have been installing important software essential to it to run and you shut it off mid install. This can cause HUGE problems and your laptop may not even start because it’s missing files! Take the extra 20 seconds and shut it down from your desktop.

Software is important too

This is obvious but take care of your software too. It runs in conjunction with your hardware (the physical laptop and all the components inside) and if it’s not updated, your hardware can fail. Always updated your OS, Anti-Virus, and any other essential software items vital to the operation of your laptop.

Taking care of the physical appearance of the laptop causes it to run better (no, seriously) – If your laptop is clean and dust free the components will work without error. If you don’t bang it around outside it’s case, no parts will fail. And if it doesn’t overheat, then parts wont melt.

Apply these safety tips and your laptop will last a lot longer then you think.

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