Depending on your traveling style and how long you’ll be traveling for, there are some special considerations and costs to take into account right before ordering and as soon as you open up your new laptop. First off, we don’t recommend you spending any additional money on an extended or store warranty on your new laptop. Manufacturer’s warranties are almost always a year long and cover most defects like hard drive failures you’re likely to encounter. Also, if you’re going to be traveling extensively or simply have a bad break one week into a 3 week vacation, you’re probably going to spend the money to get it fixed on the road before you can get back home. Plus, the truth is that most people end up replacing their laptops and upgrading about every 3 years so it doesn’t make sense to pay 10-30% of the cost of a new laptop on a warranty. Instead, take that money you’d pay for the warranty and put it aside in a savings account for your next, brand new laptop down the line.
Backups
You’ll want to seriously consider backups, one thing we don’t think your laptop should be without, whether you travel or not! For most people on the road, online backups feature many advantages over carry external drives with them. Online backup providers typically offer a few gigabytes for free but also have pay unlimited options as well. Unlimited backup from providers like Mozy and CrashPlan are very cheap – about $200 for a 2-3 year subscription. Backups are taken automatically and incrementally without your interaction and aside from the first big download, works seamlessly for most applications.
Of course, if you take pictures in RAW format or work with Adobe Photoshop or use AutoCAD, the amount of backup information might warrant you to carry an external drive. Even so, we’d still recommend online backup for the simple reason that your external drives are likely to be with your laptop so a physical mishap or lost luggage will probably take both. Online backup stores your important files in a secured location (which you can learn about by emailing the respective companies) and are maintained by staff. This also makes restoring some or all of your files that may have gone missing very easy and doesn’t require you to pull out a large external drive and deal with that. Also, when you don’t carry external drives, you end up with a lighter backpack or suitcase – yet another bonus.
Learn Some Basic Maintenence
Upgrading your RAM or replacing a hard drive in most laptops is very easy with a specialized screw driver and by following the manual (almost all are online these days). If you have the luxury of checked luggage, buy a Victorinox CyberTool and use Google to find out how to make these basic repairs and upgrades. This will save you a lot of money throughout your life and time as well. Most laptops are designed for easy access to the RAM and hard drive and are usually plug and play.
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