Laptops are some of the greatest tools at our disposal. They are completely portable for those of us on the go, on average they consume 90 percent less energy than a desktop computer and they are gradually getting cheaper every time we turn around. What more could we ask for? How about a huge list of resources for laptop consumers, well here you go.

Laptop Buying and Selling Guides - Be informed before venturing into the marketplace.

There is a lot to consider when buying or selling a laptop. If you are looking into buying a new or used laptop, you need to consider pricing, hardware and software, manufacturers and everything else that goes along with the purchase so why not make an informed decision. Or maybe you just bought a new laptop and now you want to recoup a little money off of your old one, why not do a little reading and maximize your return on the sale. That is exactly what the resources below will help you with.

1. The Essential Buying Guide for Laptops by PC Magazine offers a ton of information on buying laptops. This guide is a great resource for buying cheap laptops, gaming laptops, business laptops, portable laptops and more. This is a must read if you are in the market for a laptop.
2. Laptop Selling Tips for eBay has some great tips that will help you determine whether a potential buyer is a scammer and gives you advice on how to manage your auctions from beginning to end to ensure a smooth selling experience.
3. The Laptop Buying Guide on Cnet helps you determine which laptop will be the best for you. Everything is broken down into specific user categories making it easy to determine which hardware and features will suit you best.
4. Geek.com wrote an article titled Laptop Buying Guide - Warranty, which as the title suggests covers the ever so important warranty of your new laptop. Specifically it helps you to determine what types of warranty to look for and what those warranties cover.
5. So You Wanna Buy a Laptop is a very informative 5 page article that covers everything from how to determine if a laptop is right for you to finding the best store to buy your laptop.
6. The Laptop Buyer’s Guide from LaptopMag.com breaks down different types of laptops into categories such as desktop replacement notebooks, ultra-portable laptops, multimedia notebooks and so on. This makes finding the right laptop very easy because you can see which laptop offers what features to function best for your needs.
7. Stop by Switched for Five Things to Consider When Buying a Laptop. You will learn more about laptop battery life, weight and more things to think about before spending your hard earned cash.
8. Yes, even eBay has a Laptops Buying Guide. It is a very detailed guide and caters towards those of you planning to purchase a laptop from the eBay marketplace.
9. Learn How to Buy a Laptop from PC World. Not only does this guide cover buying the right laptop, but it also offers some insightful advice for getting the best value and maximizing your purchase. You might also have a look at their When to Buy a Laptop article, to maximize your savings and get the best deal.
10. The article How to Sell a Used Laptop Online over at eHow.com offers some sound advice for selling on Craigslist and eBay, its worth a read.
11. Wayne University has A Comprehensive Guide for Buying Laptop Computers, that takes a little deeper look into the hardware and functions of your future purchase. Many consumers are not to sure about all of the hardware and components that make up a good laptop, so you might want to have a look at this article.
12. Best Buy also offers a Laptop Computer Buying Guide for those of you in the market. It is written to be a little more on the basic side of things but informative none the less.

Best Places Online to Buy and Sell Laptops

This is by no means a definitive list of laptop shops, but it is a nice list of some of the best places on the Internet. Remember that when your buying and selling any merchandise, you should be working with trusted sources.

1. Over at Ebay.com buy new, used and refurbished laptops from the worlds biggest online auction. Of course you can also setup an account and sell your old laptop for a nice profit.
2. Geeks.com sells both new and refurbished laptops at great prices.
3. SuperWarehouse.com sells new laptops, most brands are available and shipping is free on all orders over $299.
4. TigerDirect.com sells both new and refurbished laptops at decent prices.
5. Fry’s Electronics - Great prices on laptops from a well trusted store. They run rebate offers regularly which provides great savings.
6. Dell laptops are some of the most popular on the market and some of the cheapest, stop by their website to customize your own today.
7. Amazon.com - Amazon is one of the most popular online shopping destinations and rightfully so. You can find great prices on new, used and refurbished laptops.
8. Craigslist is a great place to find some cheap laptops and you can deal locally to cut out high shipping costs. You might also consider selling your laptop there for a quick buck.
9. USANotebook.com offers an easy system to sell your old laptop for some cash. They buy 1 laptop or a 100 laptops from both private sellers and businesses. You can also buy laptops on their site for cheap prices starting under $250.
10. PcConnection.com has some great prices on laptops, easy shopping and also sells a ton of other computer products including servers.

Laptop Security - Information and products for a safer laptop.

Did you know that one out of every ten laptops will be stolen within the first 12 months of purchase? What’s worse is that 90% of those stolen laptops will never be recovered. That is a pretty frighteningly low number of recoveries. Why not invest in some of these security options to give you a little better chance of being in the 10% of people that do get their laptop back.

1. CyberAngel - After reporting that your laptop has been stolen, CyberAngel will lock and encrypt the data on your laptop and locate its position to notify the authorities. So far they have had great luck with recovering stolen laptops, and have been featured in the news several times.
2. Ever wonder How to Stop Laptop Theft? Can it even be done? This very informative 4 page article will get you a step closer to knowing the truth.
3. Inspice Trace not only allows you to track your laptop in the event of theft, but it can also unrecoverably destroy all of the data on your laptop remotely to prevent unauthorized access.
4. Stop unwanted people from accessing personal information on your computer with a Fingerprint Reader from Microsoft.
5. CompuTrace is a highly recommended suite of laptop security tools. Their protection plans include theft recovery, theft deterrence, data protection and more.
6. The PC Phone Home software enables your laptop to send an email with its location to an email address of your choice each time it access the Internet. In the event that your laptop has been stolen, as soon as the thief access the Internet, you can notify the authorities of its location. Have a Mac? Not a problem, try out Mac Phone Home instead.
7. Laptop security locks are one of the most popular devices due to their affordable price tag. While they serve more as theft deterrent than anything, they are still another viable way to protect your assets. You can find them through most stores that sell computer products.
8. Keep Your Hands on Your Handhelds will show you how to keep your laptop and other portable devices from being lost or stolen.
9. xTool’s Laptop Tracker offers the most recovery methods out of any tracking program by using the Internet, webcam, caller id and even GPS.
10. YouGetItBack.com provides a unique service for recovering your lost goods. Simply place one of their tags on your laptop and if it is found the finder can contact their 800 number and have it returned. They claim that 75% of all the lost merchandise with their tags gets returned to its rightful owner, not bad.
11. You can always stop by Doberman Security and pick up the Laptop Defender, a wireless alarm system for your laptop. Now those would be crooks won’t be touching your laptop anymore.
12. Interested in more lost item recovery services like YouGetItBack.com above? Well then why don’t you check these guys out:
    • TrackItBack.com
    • ArmorTag.com
    • BoomerangIt.com
    • zReturn.com
    • StuffBak.com

Tips for Increasing the Performance of Your Laptops Battery

There is nothing worse, than being on the road trying to get some work done and all of the sudden your laptops battery dies. Now, instead of getting some work done, you are looking around frantically for a place to plug-in, which of course is never around. Save yourself from the headaches, try some of these tips to maintain laptop battery life and performance.

1. Don’t allow your battery to discharge completely. Allowing a battery to completely discharge can have very negative effects on the overall performance and life of the battery. Often times we find that by draining the battery can in some cases cause complete battery failure or drastically shorten the charge capacity of the battery. What this means in plain English is your battery will die and/or not hold as much of a charge therefor draining quicker than it should.

   Many manufacturers recommend that your battery is stored and maintained at around half or 40% charge to maintain optimal performance. Always read the user manual that came with your laptop, or if it is a replacement battery read the included documentation

2. Take care of your battery and keep it clean. I should probably say this twice, but I won’t. Taking care of your laptop battery is crucial to its performance. Over time the metal contacts on the battery will build up gunk that can cause the battery to work harder than it should in its daily operation. So once a month, pull out the battery and wipe it down with a cloth, clean off the contacts and you will extend its life.
3. Add more memory or RAM to your laptop. Many people would speculate that this method will not help to save battery performance due to the fact that more memory requires more power to maintain. While this reasoning is true in part, if your laptop is short on RAM, your hard drive will be constantly running to make up the difference, via your swapping file, which in turn would use a lot more power and battery life. If you are using a laptop that has say 512mb of RAM, increasing this to 1gb should be more than enough to maintain optimal performance.
4. Turn off your Wifi while not in use. There is usually a switch to turn off your Wifi, however you may need to turn it off in the Wifi configuration panel. Your Wifi uses a lot of power when it is not connected because it is constantly searching for a connection, so it is a good idea to make sure it is turned off when not in use.
5. Set your laptop to hibernate rather than stand-by mode while sitting idle. While stand-by mode is great for saving on power consumption, setting your laptop to hibernate will allow the computer to completely shut itself down and still save your laptops state where you left off. Both options are good, you should at least be doing one of them, but hibernation will be the most effective.
6. Remove your battery while running your laptop on AC. If you are working from home and your laptop is plugged in to the AC, removing your battery is a good habit to have. Keep in mind that you do not want to store your battery completely discharged, but this method will allow your laptop battery to take a break while not in use.
7. Lower your graphics use. You can save a lot of power consumption by dimming your screen, lowering the screen resolution and removing the fancy graphics. Windows especially uses a lot of graphics on the menu’s and such, which is easily turned off and cut out a lot of the battery drain. The overall look may not be as pretty, but were going for battery life here.
8. Keep your laptops air vents clean. Laptops, or computers in general operate more efficiently when running at cooler temperatures. This is also why you see high end computers with water cooling systems. Anyways, by keeping the air vents clean you allow more air flow for the fans to run and the laptop will remain considerably cooler.
9. Optimal laptop performance causes optimal battery performance. Over all, the better your laptop performs the longer your laptop battery will last. It is very disruptive to your day when your laptop battery dies and you are constantly looking for a good place to plug in. So use the tips above to maintain your laptops battery at peak performance and life on the go should be a little easier.
10. Remove USB devices when not in use. Usb devices often require a good amount of power to continue running. If you are not using them make sure to remove them from the computer and this will help to save on battery consumption.

Does Your Laptop Have These Must Have’s?

1. There is just no way to start off this list without mentioning Firefox. If you haven’t already dropped Internet Explorer for Firefox, you are way behind the times. One of the best attributes of Firefox, aside from its superior performance, is how easily it is to customize the look and feel with the numerous add-ons available.
2. If you are looking for something a little different than plain old Windows, you might consider giving Linux a try. Currently, there are over 200 Linux distributions available to match your needs. If you need more information, you should have a look at 31 Resources for Installing and Running Linux on Your Laptop.
3. Keep in touch with your friends with GoogleTalk, a great IM (Instant Messaging) client from Google. If you prefer to talk in person, you might consider installing the Skype service on your laptop.
4. Unless you popped the extra dough for a Windows Business edition, you are probably lacking a suite of office tools, to keep you working on the go. The best option in this case is to go download your copy of OpenOffice.org, a free, open source office suite.
5. If you are in need of a solid, customizable email client for your laptop on the go, head over to the Mozilla website and download Thunderbird for all of your mail sending needs.

Laptop Repair and Upgrade Guides - Get that laptop running at peak performance.

Did you know that your laptop is about 30 percent more likely to fail than your desktop computer. Why? Because they get lugged around, beat-up in your carrying cases and often used in less than desirable conditions. Just knowing that information should make you a little more pro-active in maintaining your poor old laptop from it’s constant barrage of abuse. The resources below will help you protect and repair your laptop.

1. 10 Fast Fixes for Nagging PC Problems will help you with slow start-up times, slow Wi-Fi connections, broken keyboard keys and more, check it out.
2. PcAnswers.co.uk offers tons of great tips, advice and tutorials on many of the common and not so common problems that plague our pc’s.
3. Learn how to Make Your Old Laptop Wireless from Yahoo tech. Most new laptops come with wireless capabilities, but if you are still rocking that older laptop, this article may be helpful to you.
4. PC Troubleshooting and Laptop Repair from DailyInt.com includes advice on extending the life of your laptop battery, how to upgrade an old laptop and more information on laptop repair and troubleshooting. It is worth a look.
5. LaptopRepair101.com offers tons of helpful links to laptop service manuals, repair guides and more, this site is a great resource to have in your toolbox.
6. Have you been looking for Cheap Notebook Tweaks to Maximize Your Laptop? If your laptop hasn’t been running at its peak performance, you may want to have a look that article. You might also want to read these 12 Cheap Ways to Give an Old Laptop a New Life for more great tips.
7. If after reading all of the information above, you still can’t fix that laptop you might consider asking your specific questions at some of these sites:
   • Yahoo! Answers
   • Google Answers
   • AnswerBag
   • All Experts
   • Askpedia
   • Just Answer
8. You can also visit some of the laptop and notebook forums for more help.

Sometimes you just have to step outside of normal and learn to love things that are different, which is exactly what we did with these unique modded laptops. We scavenged the Internet to find our favorites, but if you have a laptop mod that you think should be included send us some pics or drop a link in the comments!

Scorched Earth:

This is a “too cool” for words laptop mod created by Dave Williams over at bit-tech.net. After a trip to the site from the link we provided, you will find the incredible artistry that went into the creation of this mod, as they take you through it step by step with both pictures and commenting. Even the small details like the skulls were hand made and painted to accompany this piece. Great work Dave!

Steampunk Laptop:

Built to replicate a Victorian music box, datamancer.net has included all of the bells and whistles in this very ornate laptop mod. There is so much detail in this laptop mod we don’t even know where to begin describing it, so just take a look for yourself. There are more pictures available at the creators site.

Legnatile - The Wooden Laptop:

This is a great laptop mod. The entire case has been custom and hand made from wood by the creator Gabriele Zaverio. Gabriele began making these in his workshop in 1998 and is still going at it, if you are interested in purchasing one of these you can contact him through his website for pricing and information.

24kt Gold 17″ Macbook Pro:

How about a 17″ Macbook Pro plated in 24kt gold? That will make everyone in the office jealous, that is of course if you could afford the thing, given the fact that the Apple logo has more diamonds than my wife’s wedding ring. Never the less, it is a beautiful laptop and the team over at computer-choppers.com did an amazing job.

Dual Dragon Laptop Mod:

This is a nice laptop mod featuring dual dragons and a custom paint job done by the fine folks over at DragonSteelMods.com.

Ironwork Laptop:

While this is a very interesting laptop mod created by Monkey Farm and we would love to tell you more about it, the site is written in Japanese so until we learn to read that language you will have to let the picture do the talking.

Yellow Zippered Pokemon Laptop:

If Pokemon is your thing, exonome.com has got a laptop mod just for you. While this is not the best mod in the bunch, it does have some unique features like the zippered front and of course the Pokemon everything that makes it unique.

Water-Cooled Laptop:

Well it may not be the most attractive, or functional, laptop mod that we have seen, but it is a mod none the less and here is a 13 Step Guide to Build Your Own Water-Cooled Laptop.

The Wacky Wall Street Laptop:

Created by Jeff Jaxon, this mod is created out of a Mac PowerBook G3 and the total overhaul cost only $22. The top portion was attached with none other than a toilet seat hinge, eew! We found this information via macworld.com.

Have you hit that benchmark in life where your kids are carrying around laptops and talking on the phone to their friends all of the time? Its funny because when I was a teenager I didn’t have cellphones and laptops like they do now, if my friend and I wanted to talk long distance we had to run a longer string between two tin cans and then there was so much static on the line that you couldn’t hear each other anyway.

But what can I say, times have changed and us parents have to change with them. With that said, you can pretty much guarantee that your teens laptop is going to take a lot of abuse in the course of its travels, so you need to do the best that you can to protect everything else. After all you don’t want to buy a new laptop once a month do you?

So I have included a list of cheap, and what we would consider essential upgrades to add to your teens laptop, in an effort to keep it going. If you were to buy them all it could get expensive, so just choose the ones that you think are necessary for your teen.

1. Virus protection is a must have for any teen. You know its funny because I have spoke with a lot of parents that always install anti-virus software on their computer but never thought to install it on their kids computers. They need it more than you do! Every spare moment of their life is probably spent accessing the internet, they probably spend twice as much as time online than you do, so to keep their system running in peak performance you have to keep it safe. There are many cheap anti-virus programs out there these days, you can buy one for under $20, and you can even get some online for free.

2. Get them a laptop skin. Yes, I know this one sounds kind of strange, but it actually has two benefits. Number one your kids will think your the greatest parents ever because you bought them a cool new laptop skin. But from your advantage, you are actually protecting their laptop from all of the bumps, scrapes and bruises with a heavy vinyl skin. This is a great way to make both parents and kids happy at the same time. You can buy laptop skins online for around $20.

3. Protect their laptops from thieves. Over 1 million laptops a year are stolen and only 2% of them are ever recovered by the police. Schools are no exception, in fact they are some of the most likely places for your child’s laptop to be stolen. Someone may break into their locker or steal it out of their backpack, but you can protect it. Synet offers a program that will dispatch a location email from your laptop as soon as it gets an Internet connection if the laptop has been reported stolen. Any connection such as dial-up, cable even wireless will work and it notifies the company of its exact location to be reported to the police. For only $49.95 this adds a great deal of protection for your teens laptop.

4. Set them up with an office suite for doing homework. You want them to do their homework, in fact thats probably why you bought the laptop to begin with, so give them the tools to do it. You don’t need to spend hundreds of dollars on Microsoft Office, instead, install OpenOffice on their system for free. It is just as good as Microsoft’s program, has all the same features and you can’t beat the price.

5. Monitor their online activity. There are a lot of bad people in this world, and a lot of them are out to get kids. You should monitor your teens activities online in MySpace, forums, chat rooms and anywhere else to make sure that they are safe. Spector Pro by NetBus is a great stealth program that does just that. You can’t find the program files, you can’t add or remove the program, delete it, access it or anything else unless you have the secret code to do so, which means your kids won’t be able to touch it. Now this is the most expensive upgrade in this list, but we still consider it cheap at only $100, your kids safety is worth that much.

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Did you know that you can turn that cheap laptop of yours into a top notch machine that beats out the competition for less than $200? I have recently finished doing some research for an article on the topic of budget priced laptops and was astonished by what I found!

After comparing many of the cheap laptops on the market against some of the more “high end” laptops out there today, I noticed something very interesting, they both share almost all of the same features with a few exceptions. The most crucial of those exceptions being, the amount of memory or RAM included and the operating system that the laptop comes with. Now here’s the great news, both of those, plus some can be upgraded for under $200 and anybody can do it, even if you are not a computer whiz! Let me break down those two exceptions for you below and then I will show you how to fix them.

1. Cheap laptops usually come with less memory. Your laptops memory, otherwise known as RAM, is crucial to how fast the system can process information. A cheap laptop will usually come with either 256mb or 512mb of memory, this is barely enough to even keep the operating system happy, especially if you are running Windows Vista which is known for being a resource hog. The great news is that this is an easy and affordable fix that anyone can do.

2. The operating system. First of all, if your laptop doesn’t have Windows Vista, you may count your blessings. Don’t get me wrong, Vista is a very attractive operating system and its new which creates even more appeal, but Windows XP is much more desirable for heavy users. Now, some of the cheap laptops even come with Windows Vista, usually the Home Basic edition, which is okay we can work with it here. If you wanted something more geared towards business, like Microsoft Office, I will be covering that later on as well, so for now just stick to the laptop you have or can afford and let me take care of the rest.

Speed up that Cheap Laptop with Some New Memory

Any time you are dealing with a sluggish computer, upgrading the memory to at least 1gb, 2gb if possible is a quick fix with big benefits. After upgrading the amount of memory your laptop has you will instantly notice the difference in how fast it responds to your actions and operates overall. 1gb memory sticks can be picked up for around $100, depending on where you shop, you may also check prices online to find even greater deals. If you are unsure about how to install the new memory stick, first consult your laptops user guide and then have a look at this illustrated guide that will show you step by step what you need to do, it is really easy, I promise.

If you are really in a budget crunch, you may visit websites like NewEgg.com, eBay.com, Geeks.com and TigerDirect.com to find the best deals.

Defragment Your Disk for Even More Speed

Defragmenting your disk is a simple and free way to speed up your laptop. You may not notice substantial differences, as you will with the memory boost above, but every little bit helps. If you don’t even know what defragmenting a disk means, LogicalExpressions.com has a very nice analogy that should break it down for you.

While systems vary on how defragmenting is accomplished, I will show you how to do this in Windows XP, since it is the most common. In Windows XP click on Start>>All Programs>>Accessories>>System Tools>>Disk Defragmenter and you are ready to go. Just click on Analyze and when complete, click Defragment. Depending on how long it has been since this was last done, and how many programs and files have been added, this process can take several hours to complete. It is recommended that you shut down all programs or anything running before you begin defragmenting your disk. Also if you are running on a system other than Windows XP, I would suggest you perform a Google search for information on how to do this in your system. (more…)

Is the thought of running Linux on your laptop making you feel faint? Have you been by the forums and help centers online lately? If you have you probably know that you are not alone. These sites are packed with questions like “Which Linux distro is best for my laptop”, “Why doesn’t my laptop run properly after installing Linux”, What’s the best laptop for running Linux” and the list goes on and on.

With so many Linux distributions available and the wide variety of hardware and software that laptops support these days, it would seem that many Linux interested consumers have found themselves buried in decision. So what do you do now, forget about Linux all together and fire up Windows again? If you do that, you might end up with a mob of Linux supporters at your door step with burning torches and pitch forks, so that won’t work.

What will work is following the list of resources I have provided below, learn as much about Linux as you can, get familiar with your laptops hardware and then just try out a good Linux distro and see what happens.

General Linux Information

Linux Online - If you are going to learn about Linux, you might as well start out at the source. Linux Online, or Linux.org, is the primary home for Linux where you can find out news and information, learn about different Linux distributions and more.

Linux.com - A great site filled with information and resources for people interested in using and learning about the Linux operating system.

DistroWatch.com - Covers the latest additions, news and releases for many Linux distributions.

Linux Journal - This site has some great articles on Linux, along with “how to’s” and resources to get you going.

Kernal.org - Kernal.org, or the Linux Kernal Archive is the primary site for the Linux Kernal source. But they also have information about Linux and a system that allows you to report bugs in the Linux Kernal.

Linux Wiki - Wikipedia.com has a bunch of great information on Linux. You can find everything from the history of Linux to the definition of Linux terms you hear around the web.

LinuxToday.com - Find Linux jobs, read the latest Linux news and keep up to date on the constantly changing world of Linux.

The Linux Foundation - Site is operated by a nonprofit group dedicated to furthering the growth of Linux. This is a great source for finding information on Linux.

Linux Magazine - Geared more towards developers and Linux power users, this is a great site to visit for Linux information.

Popular Linux Distributions

Knoppix - Bootable, full featured Linux distribution.

Freespire - Community developed version of the Linspire distribution.

Mandriva - Very powerful Linux distribution built to run many different platforms.

Ubuntu - Mainstream distribution based on Debian.

Debian - A free distribution of the Linux operating system.

Fedora - A complete, general purpose distribution developed by RedHat.

Gentoo - A more advanced Linux distribution designed for developers and power users.

RedHat - High end Linux distribution designed for businesses.

Suse - Very popular mainstream Linux distribution. (more…)

There’s no need to spend all of that money on a new laptop when you can put some life back into your old one, for much cheaper. Below you will find plenty of upgrades that you can do yourself, and best of all they are sure to bring that old laptop of yours back from the dead.

Better Performance-

1. Upgrade your laptop to at least 1 gig of RAM. Many computers come with 256mb to 512mb of RAM from the factory, if lately you have found your laptop to be a little sluggish, increasing the amount of RAM to at least 1 gig is sure to speed things up for you. This quick fix can be done for under one hundred dollars and will make a huge difference to your laptops performance.

2. Get yourself a good spyware program. Did you know that the biggest reason people begin to have problems with their pc’s is due to spyware? Many people think it is due to a virus or simply running to many programs, however after running a standard virus removal software they find no difference in performance. A good spyware program can be picked up for around forty dollars and you won’t regret the purchase.

3. A new hard drive can give that old laptop a huge boost in performance. The more rpm your hard drive has the faster it runs, and of course the faster the hard drive runs the better performance your laptop will have. You will instantly notice programs open faster, you can open and save large files quicker etc., but this does come with price. Many times upgrading a hard drive will drain your laptops battery quicker, so when shopping around make sure you compare manufacturers to see which drive will be a better fit for you. You can pick up a new hard drive for between fifty and two hundred dollars depending on manufacturer and drive specifications.

4. Defragment and clean up your disk. This is by far one of the best, and free, methods for increasing the performance of your old laptop. Disk defragmenter is included in all Windows systems after Windows 95, but you can also find third party programs that work just as well or maybe even better.

5. Remove un-needed programs from start-up. You may begin to notice that when you start-up your laptop all kinds of programs start to run or open up. If your laptop is trying to run all of these programs and start-up your system at the same time, its sure to slow it down. Remove all un-needed and un-wanted programs from the start-up system and you will be in action.

6. Upgrade your old office suite to OpenOffice.org. Chances are, if you are running an old system your current office tools are out dated, fortunately you can fix this for free. OpenOffice.org is a free suite of office tools that function, in my opinion, better than Microsoft Office, so this may be an easy and free way to get you back in business again.

Better Appearance-

1. If your laptop is looking a little out dated, you can add a bright new skin for under twenty dollars. Skins are cheap ways to quickly change, personalize and even renew the appearance of that plain old laptop. Simply run a search on Google for “laptop skins”, find one you like, order it and when it arrives peel of the vinyl sticker and attach it to your laptop, thats it you have instantly transformed that old laptop into an attractive piece of technology. (more…)