Wouldn’t it be nice if you never had to plug in your laptop?  Well that’s not going to happen but if you remember a few things, you might be able to leave it unplugged longer.

• Use the battery.  Don’t leave your computer plugged in all the time.  Unplug your laptop to force it to run on battery power.
• Fully discharge and recharge your battery periodically, about once a month.
• Get as much time out of each charge as possible by dimming your screen and using power saving settings on your computer.
• Again, don’t leave your laptop in a hot car, or in direct sunlight.  Heat can reduce battery life.

Did anyone ever pick you up by just your head?  Just the thought might make you cringe.  That’s about the same as picking your laptop up by the screen.  They don’t like that anymore than you would like being picked up by your head.  Picking it up by it’s screen can ruin the hinges, making it nearly impossible to keep the screen up.  There’s not much worth in a permanently closed laptop.

Viruses and malware attack in various ways.  Don’t assume that because you only go on “safe” websites, that you’re laptop is safe from attack.  Make sure you have virus and malware protection running on your system whenever you’re connected to the internet.  Even while you have virus protection, be careful what kinds of things you click on and what kinds of websites  you visit.

Beware that while if you’re using free Wi-Fi, say in a cafe or bookstore, it may be relatively easy for someone to see that information.  If you wouldn’t flip your laptop around and show the guy next to you what you’re looking at (think banking and credit card info), you might not want to look at it while on a public Wi-Fi.

Take note if you’re saving data into shared folders.  It’s possible that when you’re on a public network others could see what’s in your shared folders.  Do you want to share that financial info with the girl sitting across from you at Starbucks?  If you don’t, you probably want to make sure it’s not in a shared folder.  Another way to protect your precious data is to make sure you have a log-in password, and it should be something other than “password,” “qwerty” or “1234.”

Just in case something does happen to your laptop, are you still going to have all those wonderful pictures of your nephew’s 4th birthday?  If you kept your pictures backed up you would.  It’s always a good idea to “prepare for the worst.”  Backing up your data can make a huge difference between just having to replace your computer, and losing everything.

Let us know if we can help you out with any of these safety measures, or fix something if you’re reading this article too late.