If you are a proud owner of a laptop or netbook computer and wish your computer would serve you for years to come, then you have to go through this article very carefully. You will find the tips that, when you follow them consistently, will prolong the lifespan of your laptop and will provide a much more pleasant experience using your laptop in the future.

Laptops and netbooks today are designed with rough, mobile activities of their owners in mind. They are designed, unlike their counterparts desktop computers and servers, to operate while in movement, to be exposed to bigger temperature swings, and overall, to more abuse. However, the laptop computers are definitely vulnerable to extraordinary treatments. Let us look into a few of them now. Here is the list of eight things you definitely want to avoid doing with your laptop:

Do not allow laptop to fall or slide down to the floor. Even though today’s laptops are designed for heavy shock treatment, this may just be too much. Even if your laptop is a ToughNote or a Lenovo series with active fall detection mechanism, challenging your laptop this way is just not worth it. Do not open any cover of your laptop unless you are exchanging the memory banks. The inner workings of the laptop are extremely densely packed and it will be difficult for you to do anything. You will probably void the warranty and in addition, you probably will not be able to find anything there worth fixing anyways. If you are adding or replacing memory banks, be sure to ground yourself very well before opening the laptop. The inner workings of a laptop are very sensitive to static electricity. Do not sit a heavy object on top of the laptops case. I once had a guitar “slide” down onto the top of the case. When I opened the laptop up, the screen was broken. Not a pretty picture to behold. The LCD screen is just a fraction of an inch away from the top of the case and there is not much protection for the screen by the top of the case. Do not use your laptop in dirty or dusty environments. I have recently been in an area with many fires around for a week. The air was filled with smoke, not enough to prevent me from walking on the streets but enough to enter into the houses and affect my laptop. I had severe problems with the laptop starting up and I suspect it was because of the smoke and dust settling on the inner workings of the laptop. In case of smoke, cover your laptop with a plastic bag at lest when not in use. Do not let your laptop get wet. Today’s laptops are mostly designed to withstand a spill of coffee, soda, or tea. However, I would not take a chance. The keyboards are usually difficult and expensive to replace on a laptop and could still be sensitive to the effects of a spilled hot coffee. And even a single stuck key could necessitate replacing the entire keyboard. Do not allow your laptop close to strong magnetic fields. Such fields are present in the old-style CRT television tubes, around larger stereo speakers. A strong magnetic field can interfere with the hard disk activities that work by modifying magnetic fields. Your hard drive may become unusable. Do not turn your laptop off when it is writing data on the disk. Modern operating systems such as Vista or Windows 7 write date on the disk practically all the time, to optimize performance. So whenever possible, do not turn your computer off without the proper shutdown or restart procedure. Especially dangerous is turning the computer off during the check disk procedure and during the disk defragmentation procedure. Do not expose your laptop to extremes in temperature. Both high and low temperatures can damage your LCD screen, causing it to crack. The extremely high temperatures are liable to warping the case of the laptop. LCD screens do not particularly like being twisted and can become irreversibly damaged or broken.

So here you have it. Now that you know the eight things to avoid doing with your laptop, you can memorize them and just stop doing them. Just a few thoughtful acts and precautions can extend the life of your laptop and its parts by several years.