I’m writing from recent, personal experience in this post. I’m hoping that my advice will be preventive for you. I was getting myself a drink of water and I set it down next to my laptop, then managed to jiggle the cup and lost about half a cup of water directly onto my laptop keyboard. Most of the water stayed on the keyboard, but a little seeped through to the hardware underneath, causing to laptop to spontaneously shut down. Not a good sign.

How much is too much?

Spilling a mouthful of water onto your laptop generally isn’t too much of a big deal. The keyboard on a typical laptop is generally a tray that is water-tight and can take minor spills. The problem is when the quantity of water that is spilled onto the keyboard is so great that it runs over the side of the keyboard tray and gets underneath. Dribbling a little water on your laptop isn’t a big deal, it’s when you get a slosh that’s more than about a quarter of a cup that things start to get hairy. That’s when you join the Brotherhood of the Bedraggled Laptop (sisters welcome too).

First Steps

The first thing to be done is to unplug the laptop as quickly as possible and turn it over as smoothly and quickly as possible and remove the battery. You’re fighting gravity here, and seconds count. Unfortunately, my laptop shut itself down within three seconds, which was too fast for me to do anything about it. The goal is to get the laptop turned over fast enough that the water stops seeping downward and reverses course, at which point gravity becomes your friend, not your tormenter. It is important not to shake the laptop back and forth. One might assume that this dislodges water, but really all you are doing is spreading the water over more internal components.

Once the laptop is opened up flat, with the keyboard and screen face down and the power plug and battery pulled, move it somewhere it can dry out like a towel or a bed. Something that will help soak up the water.

Give It Time

Once you’ve performed the laptop first aid described above, it’s time to get some tools together. You’ll want to pull the hard drive out and inspect it for water, and this usually involves a Philips #1 screwdriver. Fortunately for me, my HD came out unscathed and none of my data was lost. You’re going to want to undo all of the screws that hold panels onto the bottom of your laptop, open it up and look for signs of water. Also, this will help air it out. Leave the laptop as dissassembled as you can manage to let it breathe. The harsh reality is that you should leave your computer like this for a week. Yes, I said a week. A major spill is a serious situation and you want to allow the computer to fully dry out before attempting to start it up again.

Recover Your Data

If you aren’t tech saavy, you may need help for this next step. You’ll want to find a way to check your hard drive. This may mean installing it in another computer. Another option is to buy a device which will allow you to hook up your hard drive to another computer via USB. This can either be an enclosure, which turns an internal device into an external device. Or, it could be just a cable that attaches to your hard drive. The cables are usually about half the price of the full enclosure, but your laptop may be out of commission permanently, and if you need your data to be portable to survive a while without your trusty computer by begging computer time from friends, an enclosure may be a good investment.

Pick up the Pieces

Once you’ve allowed a week for your laptop to fully dry out, put the pieces back together and see if it starts up. If nothing has been seriously damaged by shorting out, it may start up OK. Laptops do sometimes survive a dousing, but damage can happen to a laptop in two ways in this situation. If water hits a critical component while electricity is flowing through it, that can cause the component to short out, which is very bad.

The second way that an internal component can be damaged is if the internal components get corroded. Essentially, the components rust. Even a small amount of water can start this process, and once it starts it just gets worse. The tough part about this is that it doesn’t cause obvious damage, it just causes the computer to start to behave unusually as electricity starts to have a hard time getting to where it’s supposed to go. So, once your computer successfully restarts, keep an eye on it. If you’re very, very lucky you might suffer no ill effects from your misadventure.

Replacing Parts

The most likely part of your laptop to suffer damage in this situation is the motherboard. The motherboard is the large part that everything else plugs into. It’s like the frame of a car. It is a flat piece of silicon that sits internally just a little smaller than the width and depth of the laptop. The reason why it most easily gets damaged is that it’s everywhere inside the computer. If your computer starts up alright, but then starts acting funny, take it to a repair shop and have them open it up. With luck, they’ll be able to see where the water got in, assess the damage, and find you a replacement motherboard. If you’re unlucky, it won’t be obvious where the water was or else the cost of a motherboard replacement will be too large a portion of what the laptop cost in the first place.

The Bottom Line

Spilling water on your laptop is a bad idea. Desktops are less of an issue, because they usually are better protected from spills by their cases and the fact that they don’t lay like a sun-basking cat directly beside where you like to place your drink.

Be careful. If you do spill water, act quickly and use common sense to pull the plug and use gravity to reverse the water that’s seeping toward your motherboard, then dry the computer out.

Ruggedized Laptops

Some computer makers provide a line of Rugged laptops. a Ruggedized laptop usually is sealed against spills, has a stronger outer shell, and a shock-mounted hard drive that’s less likely to get damaged in a fall. For those of us who have been through the horrors of a water spill, that sort of thing starts to make a lot of sense.

What type of Battery?

The first thing to consider in selecting a battery is the material it is made of. NiCd (Nickle Cadmium) is an old style of battery, which is very difficult to find these days because it has been replaced by lighter and more efficient alternatives. NiMH (Nickle Metal-Hydride) is also very rare for the same reason. Most laptop batteries today are made from Lithium, because they are lighter and last longer. Lithium Ion is what most laptops use, while Lithium Polymer is gaining in popularity. For the most part, laptop battery makers switch very quickly to the latest materials available, so you probably couldn’t find a battery included in a laptop that itsn’t Lithium right now.

How much power does it hold?

Laptop batteries are composed of several smaller batteries called ‘cells’. The more cells, the more powerful the battery will be and the longer it will last. But, the number of cells doesn’t tell you how large each cell is. For a better measure of how much power a particular battery will hold, look for ‘amp-hours’ (Ah) or ‘milliamp-hours’ (mAh). These two numbers are the same rating, but one is measured a thousand times more precisely, like meters and kilometers. It’s hard to give ranges for what’s good, but an inexpensive battery often starts at around 2000 mAh, a decent battery is going to be around 4000 and an excellent battery is going to be 6000 or more.

How long will it actually last?

That’s a tough question to answer, because there are many factors which affect the performance of a battery in a given laptop. The basic idea of the mAh rating system is to provide an indication of how many hours a battery should last. So, a 2000 mAh battery should last 2 hours on a typical laptop under typical usage. A 6000 mAh battery should last for six. But, there are a lot of ways efficiency can be improved or reduced.

Construction and Components

A laptop that is put together efficiently, which has solid connections and well organized components will use less battery than a laptop that is put together sloppily. A laptop that uses high quality components will often perform better. Also, how much hardware is included in a laptop can make a big difference in how well it performs. A laptop that has 2 GB of RAM will use less power than a laptop running 4 GB. Right now there is debate over whether a Hard Drive or a Solid State Drive which has no moving parts gets better battery life. A 17″ monitor built into a laptop is going to use way more power than a 14″ screen. If battery life is more important to you than raw processing power, consider buying less machine or upgrading to more efficient components when selecting your laptop.

Operating System

The operating system, such as Windows or Linux, is constantly making decisions about how to allocate power. Do I shut down the monitor because the computer hasn’t been used in a few minutes? Do I shut down the hard drive? Does the DVD drive need to be spinning right now? There are many ways in which an operating system can be designed to recognize how a user operates and how a machine performs and to coordinate the machine’s use of power to best suit the user’s pattern. Take some time to fiddle with the power settings on your computer, and you could eke out a few more precious minutes from your battery.

Usage

How you use a computer affects how long the battery will last. If you are writing a document, or watching a movie or playing a video game, each of those activities will use a different amount of battery. If the computer has to be constantly accessing the hard drive or keeping the DVD drive spinning, then it’s going to use more power. Dimming the brightness of the screen can also make a big difference. Putting your computer to sleep when you know you won’t be using it for a few minutes will preserve the battery.

How much RAM?

Just like your computer needs RAM (Random Access Memory) to operate smoothly, your video card needs memory of its own, usually called VRAM (Video-RAM). While its easy to replace or upgrade the RAM in your computer, VRAM is permanently built into your video card. If you want more VRAM, you need to replace the video card entirely. No VRAM, no vroom.

Discrete or Built-in?

Most motherboards come with built-in video. When your computer uses the built-in video, it uses part of your RAM for normal computing and part of it for video. Obviously, sharing is not as good as everyone having their own resources for their own tasks. If you install a discrete video card, the motherboard will automatically use the newly installed card as the video source instead of its built-in video capability.

To understand this arrangement, imagine a TV with a built in VCR. A motherboard is like that TV VCR combo. You can still attach an external DVD player or a Blu-ray player to a combo TV if you want to. If all you need is a VCR, then what’s built-in works fine. If you need DVD or Blu-ray, then you need to add something extra, bypassing the VCR. Video that’s built into a motherboard is adequate, but for high performance, you want to add something external, a discrete video card which bypasses what’s built-in.

Is it Built-in?

It can be difficult to tell whether a computer has a discrete video card. Manufacturers don’t like to admit when video is built-in. The phrase to look for is ‘up to’. If the spec sheet says, ‘Video: 256MB’, then that’s VRAM in a discrete card. If the spec sheet says, ‘Video: up to 256MB’, then it’s built-in and that’s the amount of RAM that the motherboard is able to divert to video, leaving less RAM for the computer to work with.

Most inexpensive computers don’t bother to put in a discrete video card, they just use built-in video. A decent Video Card will bump the cost of an entry level computer by 10-30%, and when the industry is as cut throat as it is, you have to do everything you can to keep costs down.

On a desktop, it is easy to add a discrete video card in later, so there’s no risk buying something underpowered. You can just upgrade. On a laptop, adding a video card in later isn’t really an option. Hard drives can be replaced on a laptop or added via USB, memory can be upgraded, optical drives can be added via USB. But, the video card and screen are the part of a laptop that you’re really stuck with if you buy too little at first. If you buy a laptop with built-in video and you need more, you’d better hope the store has a good return policy.

Cost vs Power

An underpowered video card can slow down an otherwise snappy computer, but the reality is that many users just don’t have a need for that much horsepower. Certain graphics-intensive programs, like video games, need a video card with kick. But, if all you’re likely to use the computer for is word-processing, email and web browsing, then built-in graphics will suffice.

Consider what you’ll use the computer for, and if you need power, don’t skimp on the video card, especially on a laptop. If you do buy a laptop with built-in video, make sure you understand the terms of the return policy.

Laptop

The primary advantage of a laptop is mobility. You can take it with you from home to the office or school. For a student, nothing beats being able to bring along your laptop to the library or class. Taking notes, writing papers and doing research and being able to enter all your work immediately is definite plus.

Because everything is tightly built together, replacing damaged components or upgrading can be difficult. With the advent of USB, upgrading is less of an issue, because almost anything you might want to add can be added through USB. There are certain things which are essential to the functioning of a laptop that can’t be easily upgraded, though. The video card, monitor and the motherboard are all difficult to upgrade on a laptop, so be sure that you can live with what you buy at first.

The typical lifespan of a laptop is two years. If the monitor or the video card becomes damaged, it’s usually cheaper to replace than repair. Laptops are bumped around in bags and live in the wild world. They suffer more wear and tear than desktops. If you need or want a laptop, buy what you can afford to replace every few years. Being careful will keep your laptop in working shape longer, but on average, you’ll need to get something new more often.

Desktop

The advantage of a desktop is power and upgradeability. A desktop provides more power for less money than a laptop and it’s much easier to repair or upgrade a desktop. Adding a second hard drive or a new video card is relatively inexpensive and easy on a desktop. Video editing, photo editing or other tasks which require serious horsepower and storage are best performed on a desktop. If those are frequent tasks for you, then a desktop is a probably your best option unless money is no object and you can afford the latest and greatest in a laptop.

A desktop will usually last a typical user about 4-5 years. Because it’s easier to add a new video card, hard drive, optical drive (CD, DVD, Blu-ray), or memory, a desktop can keep up with your need for more power as your computing needs develop. If you weren’t into video editing when you bought a desktop, but later develop an interest in becoming the next Spielberg, just add a second hard drive and a better video card.

Netbook

A netbook is a new category of computer. It doesn’t come with a DVD or CD drive, the screen is very small compared to a laptop, and it comes with much less memory and storage than a typical laptop. It isn’t meant to be a full replacement for a laptop. It’s meant to be a small, portable machine that will do 90-95% of what a laptop could do. You wouldn’t want to try to do extensive video editing on a netbook, but for email, word processing and web surfing it could be just the thing. If you absolutely need a DVD burner, you can add an external drive via USB, which will allow your netbook to do everything your laptop would, but without quite so much horsepower.

If you need the power of a desktop, but you still want portability, then buying a netbook as a complement for a desktop might make sense. A netbook could also be a good option for a household where there aren’t enough computers to go around for everyone who wants to be surfing the net. This new category of machine is growing quickly in popularity, and the price is certainly right.