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Three Travel Tips: Traveling With Your Laptop

While on the road, what would be your advice for storing your laptop during the times you don’t feel like bringing it with you?

Hi Frank,

It depends where you’re staying, I guess. In decent hotels I usually just leave mine sitting on my desk, but some laptops might also fit inside those personal hotel room safes. In hostels I keep my laptop as low-profile as possible (and not stored in a laptop case) so that few people even know I have it with me, and then generally just stash it under my clothes in the bottom of my backpack. (But I have insurance and I burn the entire contents of the hard drive to disc before any big trip, so I have the liberty to take fewer theft precautions than some people.) The easiest thing is to leave it with friends in the city, but obviously that’s not always possible.

This may be pushing it, but I’ve lived in eastern Europe and, when I do carry a laptop, I don’t even carry it in a typical laptop bag.  I know of someone who was robbed because he was carrying a bag that looked like a laptop bag (but had no laptop inside).

I have actually had a number of close calls with my laptop - stumbling and the laptop hitting the ground with me...we both lived - and I don’t know if it’s better to “conceal” the laptop by carrying it in a normal-looking bag, or to protect its “physical safety” with a good laptop bag.

Thoughts on this?

I agree, a laptop case can be like wearing a sign that says “please rob me” - a good compromise could be one of those “laptop backpacks” where there are special built-in padded pockets keeping it safe from bumps, but you don’t look like you’re carrying one. Or one of those fitted zip-up padded sleeves that protect against falls to some extent, but you can still stick the whole thing in your bag. I usually just opt for a couple of hoodies padding the bottom of my backpack but it depends what you’re doing, I guess, and how likely you are to be falling down.

Those are good ideas. 

My laptop is also unreasonably large, so that probably makes me somewhat of an exception to many who travel regularly with laptops.

I have to point out that I don’t usually fall down or anything ... somehow longer term travel wreaks havoc on my coordination.  From now on thought I’ll be better prepared!

http://travelvice.com/archive/2007/05/backpacking-with-laptop.php

Thanks for the tips.once i faced this problem,when i’m working in my laptop while ,the flight attendant serving she poured juice on my laptop and i was disappointed. i hope i will make us of these tips. If you have more tips please publish it.

These three tips are crucial but I have one more tip, BUY A THIN AND LIGHT LAPTOP. It is much much easier to carry a light laptop than a heavy one

Actually nice tips, these days most of the laptop’s are water resistant but we should take care on the backup’s in laptop’s because anything could happen when we travel…

I have some more tips: save your file in both USB and external harddisk. With two backups, it is almost impossible for you to lose your data. The last one is to lock your windows/other OS login ID. Use a password, it would help you if someone steal your laptop. The thief won’t be able to steal your data unless if he is a good hacker

Tip 4. Do not forget adapter.