Sunday, June 8, 2008
Accidents Do Happen
There are huge advantages to having a laptop, the first being their move-ability and easy transportation. You can carry your work home with you in convenience, or you can work in a coffee shop, while sipping your caf latte.
The problem though, is that with a laptop you do run more of a risk of physical damage and theft than you do with your PC that sits on your desk all day. There are numerous occasions where laptops run in the high-risk category. Because most laptops get carried around in a standard type bag, it is easy for thieves to know whats inside.
The high-risk zones are generally at the airport and your car. At the airport, when you put the bag on the conveyer belt and you walk through the metal detector, just the slightest confusion or delay and a person could easily pick you bag up and walk off with it.
If you leave your laptop in a bag on the passengers seat, people passing by easily notice it. If left long enough, the chances are that someone is going to take your laptop. It is simple to just break the window, reach in and grab the bag. Plus they know that its not filled with useless make-up because of the shape of the bag.
Laptop companies are coming out with different style bags to compensate for this. However, physical damage is something that you also have to look into. Its easy to just fling your bag in the corner or toss it onto the floor. Sitting in the sun for a long time period can cause sun damage, whether your laptop is in use or whether youve just left it on the patio table.
Often if you're walking down the street and it starts to rain, your automatic reaction is to use your bag as a temp umbrella and often the bag is the one containing your laptop. Drinking coffee or tea while working might keep you awake, but one slam of a door or sudden sound and thats hot beverage all over your keyboard. With laptops this is especially damaging, as the compounds are right under the keyboard.
A telephone ring, a friend slapping you on the back to get your attention, or even a sudden sneeze will cause the same result. Random things also have a tendency to happen, well, randomly. There have been stories of people getting frustrated with work and feeling the need to smack their head repetitively against the screen while making groaning noises. Unfortunately if this is a habit type of frustration, chances are sooner or later, after a couple of smacks, a horrible cracking noise is going to come out of the joints.
Taking general frustration out on your laptop is probably going to cause the same result. Something that happens a bit more often is that old key in the car door problem. You are carrying your laptop back, a stack of files and possibly your lunch box, wallet and styrofoam cup filled to the top with coffee.
Once at your car, chances are, your hand are full and trying to remove your car keys from either your back pocket or mouth, with your foot is going to be a bit complicated. Putting everything down on top of your car is an option. But once you have the door open and you have flung in the paper work, you are too exhausted to realize, once you are starting the car, that your laptop (and possibly your coffee cup) is still on the roof.
There are plenty of stories of people dropping their phones in the toilet, but fortunately, none about laptops. Although there are some cases where, after youve flung your bag down at home after a hard days work, your delightful five-year-old child has discovered your laptop. Before you realise, there are sticky fingerprints all of the screen and jelly teddy bears are stuck in between the keys, which have been flooded with soda.
The fact is, anything can happen with your laptop. Because your laptop has the advantage of being taken out of the office, accidents will happen. But before returning to your PC that sits on your desk, who hasnt seen beyond the four walls of the room it sits in, since you last moved, there is another simple option.
Although there is nothing you can do about people tripping over your laptop when they walk past, or stop thieves from picking it, you can save the data thats on it, as that is probably more important then the plastic bits and pieces of the laptop itself.
Simply creating back ups on a regular basis will mean that when accidents happen at least you still have your work. Unless of course, losing your work was the point behind the accident in the first place.
Celeste has been writing content and has recently joined an online marketing group for My New Laptop which specializes in selling professional laptops.
