HAVE you ever thought about tossing away your laptop? Have you ever thought about ‘hammering’ your laptop? Have you ever thought what might be the cause(s) of such ‘thoughts’? Could it be you? Most of the times YES! Continuing from last week’s article, I will again outline a few more safety tips on ‘caring your laptop’. Don’t expose your laptop to rapid temperature fluctuations. When bringing your laptop indoors during winter (if you often visit countries such as the United Kingdom, Canada), or from a low-temperature air conditioned room, don’t turn it on immediately. Instead, let it warm to room temperature first. This will avoid any potential for damage to the disk drive from condensation (reduction) forming inside the machine. Avoid heat from sunlight as well.
Don’t leave your laptop in a car. Not only does the inside of a car experience large temperature swings that could damage a laptop, but a laptop (or laptop bag) is an inviting target for a smash-and-grab thief.
Don’t place your laptop on the bed/sponge/soft chair. Repeated use of the laptop on the bed will cause the fans to suck up the dust which lies in the bed, ultimately blocking the fan. Also, by placing the laptop on the bed, its weight on the sponge will allow no air flow, causing hot air to circulate, resulting in your motherboard getting ‘fried’.  Refrain from this by using the laptop somewhere else, have a small desk next to your bed, or use a laptop stand; ultimately it can be placed on top of your ‘lap’ …see lap-top!
Use cooling pads (with fans) if the surroundings are hot or dusty. This will eliminate hot air and dust from entering the system and making the system unable to perform at its best.
Have the unit cleaned once a year to remove internal dust. Get this done by a trained, certified and experienced computer professional. If dust accumulates, the system cannot cool itself correctly. Heat can destroy the motherboard. Avoid sweeping next to a laptop; the dust will blow into the ports and creases of the instrument.
Avoid placing heavy materials, such as books, on top of your laptop and keyboard. This can push the LCD screen into the keyboard, and will eventually damage it. The CD-ROM insert will also be squished, and eventually will break.
Use a properly-sized laptop case. Whatever you use to carry around your laptop, be it a case, a bag or something you have made yourself, make sure that it is large enough to contain the laptop. This will avoid scratching, squeezing, sunlight, dust, or even potentially dropping it. Many breaks happen because of laptops being dropped or bumped. A bag greatly reduces the risk of damage.
Use and store in a well-circulated area. When you are using your laptop, do so in a place that has a constant air-circulation. Lots of people ruin their laptops by using them in an enclosed area, thus making the laptop overheat. It also helps if you store it in a well- circulated area.
Use a brush to clean the area around the exhaust fan screen. If that gets plugged up, air flow is diminished and overheating can most certainly occur.
Try and keep the laptop on a flat surface. This prevents damage to the laptop. This step can be hard, particularly if you are going out with your laptop. But if there is a flat surface available to put your laptop on, then do so.
Do not leave your laptop unattended when you are in public, unless you want to buy yourself a new one and have no good use for the information/data you presently have stored on the hard disk drive.
Don’t depend on passwords alone to protect your Laptop; they are not so difficult to overwrite or ‘crack’. Having a fingerprint scanner and laptop lock also helps to strengthen the security.
If you keep your battery fully charged and never use it, this will actually decrease its life span, Unplug your laptop so the battery is in use at least once a month. The more external hardware you have plugged in, the more CDs and DVDs you use; and the more programs you have running in the background, the harder your battery has to work. You should also clean the battery’s metal contacts every two or three months.

If you so like and care for your laptop as much as you care for yourself, you will surely find these tips useful. One last recommendation: treat your laptop like an egg. NEVER walk with your laptop, while it’s fully powered on (playing music, videos, etc), it will damage your hard drive, which is the main storage device of your laptop. Now, do you want to lose your books, videos, music, documents, pictures, recipes, etc? Guess not!