Prolonging the Life of Your Laptop

Spending a large amount of time in various coffee shops has given me the opportunity to observe quite a few people breaking basic rules of laptop care, probably due to the fact that no one ever told them that what they were doing was stupid.

Here are five tips for prolonging the lifespan of your laptop computer. Please note, this list is merely in the order I thought of them and not necessarily ranked by severity.

[ 1 ] Don’t put your computer in standby, or worse leave it on, and then put it in your carrying case/messenger bag! Even if it’s only a five minute drive to your local coffee shop.

[ 2 ] Don’t close the lid while the laptop is still on. Planning on leaving your laptop on all night to finish that illegal BitTorrent download? Take the time to turn the screen off in your power prefs (or using the functions keys on your laptop to dim the screen) and leave the lid open. Closing the lid causes heat that would normally escape through the keyboard to build up and could damage your screen in the long run.

[ 3 ] Don’t use your laptop on a bed, blanket, pillow, or any surface that your laptop is going to sink into. This blocks the airflow to cooling vents on most laptops, leading to heat issues.

[ 4 ] Don’t eat or drink around your laptop. Pretty obvious, right? Yeah, but I still break it almost every day (in fact, I’m breaking it right now!). And because I ignored this rule my laptop was killed a few months ago by a poorly placed glass of iced coffee *sniff*

[ 5 ] Don’t run with scissors, right? Same applies to laptops 😛