8 Simple Tips to Keep Your Laptop Safe

A laptop‘s portability makes it incredibly useful and easy to take anywhere. However, improper use can cause harm to the laptop and to you. These eight tips should be kept in mind to help you stay productive and safe wherever you take your laptop.

1. Turn It Off – When you’re not using the laptop, shut it down. This keeps it from overheating and wearing the battery down with constant trickle of use and then recharge. It’s especially important to shut it down before sticking it in a bag or sleeve. It can easily overheat even in sleep mode, damaging the CPU and hard drive.

2. Use a Carrying Sleeve – Before you put it in a briefcase or backpack, stick the turned off laptop in a protective sleeve. This provides padding from any unexpected shocks and also protects the ports from any dirt or other items rolling around in the bag.

3. Adjust Power Settings – Set your display brightness to the minimum acceptable levels. This will keep the laptop running longer and cooler. From the Power Options control panel, you can set the display to turn off after a short period of time, say 15 minutes. Also the hard drive can be set to stop spinning after so many minutes. You can also set your computer to sleep or hibernate.

4. Clean Your Vents – Wherever you take your laptop, make sure the vents are able to receive and exhaust air. Papers near the laptop can block an air vent, preventing optimal cooling.

5. Check Your Lap – laptops aren’t always great on top of a lap due to the high heat they can generate. You can literally burn yourself if you aren’t careful. If you do have to sit it on your lap, rest it on top of something: a book, a briefcase, or a special laptop rest. Due to the enormous power modern laptops have, they can get really hot when pushing them to their limits.

6. Disconnect Accessories – you may think that leaving your flash drive plugged in while you quickly hop to another location is a time saving idea, but you’d run the risk of damaging your flash drive and your laptop. Unplug any accessories and power adapters when moving your laptop. They can damage the accessory, the laptop port or internals in many situations. Take a few seconds to minimize the risk of damage whenever possible.

7. Hard Over Soft – When using a laptop on the couch, avoid the temptation to use a pillow as a rest. The soft material can easily block vents that may be on the underside of the laptop, causing it to overheat. Use a book or specially designed laptop cooling pad. Some of these cooling pads are USB-powered and run fans to further cool your computer.

8. Update Your BIOS – Check your manufacturer’s site regularly for BIO updates. Updated BIOS’s may improve fan control, CPU monitoring, and hard drive monitoring. However, an improper BIOS update can damage your computer, so you may want to have your IT department or a professional technician update it for you.

Bonus tip!

9. Utility Software – There are numerous fan and temperature monitoring utilities available for free download. These allow you to monitor your CPU and hard drive temperatures and your fan speeds. They can give you early warning to potential fan problems or overheating.