1. Resting Laptops on Beds, Carpets or Bare Skin

Without a cooling pad or a proper ventilation area, your laptop will overheat when used for too long. So when you wrap it up in your blankets and watch Netflix for an entire weekend? That’s not good. Overheating can decrease your battery life and, in some cases, cause serious damage to your computer and potentially catch fire.

2. Transporting Electronics Without a Case

If you’re carrying tablets, laptops and other electronics around without a protective case, you’re basically asking for busted screens and dented corners. Your electronics should be housed in a quality bag or case where they won’t be jostled around throughout the day. And to all of those carrying their laptops by the screen: stop.

3. Improper Cord Maintenance

Charger cords — particularly those made by a certain fruit related tech company — are extremely sensitive and fray easily. Be sure not to wrap them too tightly or yank them out of the wall. When you’re transporting them, wrap them loosely like you would an extension cord.

This rule also applies to headphones. Don’t wrap them too tightly around your iPod. If you do, make sure they aren’t plugged in at the time as the pressure could damage them.

4. Never Powering Off

Be honest, when was the last time you actually let your laptop stay off for more than 30 minutes? Many of us are guilty of keeping electronics in a constant state of sleep and never turning them off.

To improve the life of your battery, you should periodically power cycle it. To do this, run your battery all the way to zero and charge it, while off, until full again.

5. Using Household Cleaners on Electronics

Using household cleaning products like Windex on your devices is a bad idea, as the chemicals eat away at the coating on your screen.

6. Improperly Ejecting Drives

USB hard drives and thumb drives should always be ejected properly from your computer before you rip them out. Especially with hard drives, if the disk is spinning when you remove it you could experience data loss.

7. Never Backing Up

We know, we know, you’re getting around to it. But backing up your data isn’t exactly something you can wait on, as you never know when a major problem could arise. Frequently backing up your data to a hard drive or onto the cloud will save you one enormous potential headache.

Article Source: mashable.com