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This post focuses on laptop tips:

It's been a long, but short holiday for me... Boredom followed after my Ferrari(laptop) hard disk 'crash'. Well seriously, this experience has taught me to exercise extreme caution when using 3rd party software, at the tragic cost of much downtime. Apart from that, I did realise a number of loopholes in my laptop routine that should be rectified.

Alright, here are my thoughts:
1.Warranty
Best Practice:
Do not hesitate to extend your laptop warranty from the usual 1 or 2, to 3 years or longer- this will prove to be a saving grace should there be any abnormality or malfunction. In fact, the insurance that you're purchasing will definitely pay off, considering how laptops usually crash after 1½ years of usage. Did you know that replacing a laptop's hard disk(the part itself + labour fee + GST) at a service centre easily soars beyond the cost of warranty extension for a year?

The Math:
Equation A: 1 X Hard Disk replacement cost > 1 Year Warranty Extension
Equation B: 1 X Hard Disk replacement cost >= 2 Year Warranty Extension
*Whereby the 'cost' includes GST, labour fee, transport(taxi, courier etc.) and the replaced hard disk- easily costing $300 to $400. Furthermore this calculation assumes your laptop crashes at such a scale only once.

2.Backing Up Files
Best Practice:
Backup important files once in every few days, or when there is a huge project progress made during the day. Backup files should not only be stored in the hard disk of your laptop, but at least on 1 other removable device(thumbdrive, portable hard disk etc.).

3.Security Software
Best Practice:
Choose reliable software that utilises and manages system resources well- resource hogging software not only contribute largely to lag, but potentially to hardware overheating(if laptop cooling methods are inefficient).

What Do I Mean?:
Basically, if one uses a great anti-virus/anti-spyware/firewall(NOT WINDOWS FIREWALL) that is able to detect and address threats at a rate of >=95%, but at the cost of severe paranoid-like system monitoring(by the firewall): the security and insurance yielded at the primary cost of likely system lags are disadvantageous.

4.Care & Maintenance
Well, it's commonly stereotyped that ladies are way better at keeping things precious, this I would agree. But in the context of computers, it's the hardware/software know-how that defines 'maintenance'. A pretty laptop chassis per se, dosen't necessary mean a 'well-maintained' laptop.

This sentence officially concludes my first post after such a long downtime from blog posting, thanks for reading! =)