4 Overlooked Actions That Can Shorten Your Laptop’s Life Span

Many of us think that we are careful enough with handling our laptops. After all, how hard could it be, right? It’s relatively light enough to carry around, and we’re not slamming it on tables and such, so what harm could there possibly be?

Unbeknownst to us, however, there are still some things we do which most of us do not realize are actually harming our portable laptop parts. These actions are listed below.

• Propping your laptops up on blankets

The prevailing trend of laptop construction is that of their chassis becoming smaller and smaller. Concurrent with this trend, though, is the manufacturing of laptop components to be more efficient and powerful while still generating as little heat as possible.

While less heat is certainly produced by laptop parts nowadays, that doesn’t mean that overheating isn’t a possibility anymore. Air still needs to circulate around inside a laptop; and where else would air enter other than through the air vents.

Unfortunately, some people have the habit of using their laptops on their beds. When left unchecked, their blankets could fold over and cover up the air vents, thus depriving their laptops of air circulation. Overheating then ensues.

To avoid this, make sure to never place your laptop on top of collapsible surfaces like soft cushions and the aforementioned blankets.

• Shaking your laptops

Laptop components have a lot of moving mechanical parts in them, especially hard drives. While solid state drives are slowly but surely becoming the standard, a lot of current laptops still sport HDs.

This makes these laptops susceptible to malfunction when shaken too much. Their hard drives’ moving parts can be stirred around too much (often counter-intuitively), which can lead to corrupted data. In worst case scenarios, it can even lead to the hard drives shutting down altogether.

When bringing your laptop from one place to another, make sure the shaking is minimized by carrying it properly.

• Improper handling of laptops

Speaking of carrying your laptops properly, some users do not quite have a handle on that.

Many of them are used to carrying their laptop one-handed, letting the other side dangle and therefore increasing the chances of the aforementioned shaking. Others carry theirs by grasping their laptops’ screens, which can damage the laptop parts. Still others hold theirs by opened optical drive trays, which is just plain careless.

There is only one way to properly handle a laptop, and that’s by using both hands and carrying the computer on both sides, balancing and stabilizing it to minimize shaking.

• Mangling the cords

Finally, many think that laptop cords are as sturdy as desktop ones (in fact, I’d wager they don’t see any difference at all). While it’s true that laptop cords are made to be durable as possible, they aren’t nearly as hard as desktop ones since portability (and therefore, lightness) has to be accounted for in laptop parts construction. That is, the coverings of these laptop cords are breakable if too much stress is put on them.

And where does this stress come from? Incorrect wrapping of cords, for one.

Many users wrap the cords around their laptops. Their computers’ hard edges gradually dig into the cords, causing the latter to eventually open up and get mangled.

To avoid this, bundle the cords as they were when first unboxed; i.e. tying a cord around itself. Most cords even come with handy Velcro straps to keep the bundle in place. If yours doesn’t have those straps, twist ties are usually the alternative.

About the Author:
Abie Anarna is a blogger who specializes in writing about computers and various other electronic gadgets. Her educational background is in Information and Technology. She is very interested in all things tech-related; and has a particular inclination topwards e-recycling, which is a prominent topic in her articles. She writes for LaptopAid, a company that also contributes to the e-recycling effort. In her spare time, she loves to read books and watch sappy rom-coms.