You’re probably going to encounter some laptop disasters while away at college. Your laptop might break, forcing you to rush to the nearest repair shop. Your laptop could go missing—or worse, get stolen from your backpack. You could make one small mistake and lose all of the hard work you’ve done in a program.

Avoid these common laptop disasters this year. Follow these precautions.

Learn About Your Warranty

To make sure you can handle laptop repair costs, you should learn about your warranty now.

Do you have a manufacturer’s warranty? A manufacturer’s warranty offers you coverage for repairs and replacements that are at no fault of the user. It will exclude coverage for accidental damages made by the user. So, if you spilled a piping hot cup of coffee onto your keyboard during an all-nighter, it’s your responsibility to pay for the repairs, even while the warranty is still in effect.

Your manufacturer’s warranty typically lasts for one year. Once you reach that deadline, you will be 100% responsible for the repair and replacement costs.

Extended Warranties

Your credit card can provide an extension to your manufacturer’s warranty, as long as you used the card to purchase the laptop. Usually, it doubles the warranty period. So, if you had one year of coverage for manufacturing defects, your card could push that coverage to two years.

If you purchased an extended warranty, you could access coverage past the original deadline, too. Some extended warranty programs offer coverage for manufacturing defects and accidental damages.

Save for Emergency Repairs

Other than warranties, what else can you do to prepare for emergency repairs? You can build up an emergency fund to pay for the repairs out of pocket. This will be especially useful if you don’t have any warranty protection whatsoever.

Try to have at least $500 in the fund. This should be enough to cover basic repairs like screen replacements or battery upgrades.

Without an emergency fund, you will need an alternative payment method so that you can get your laptop in top shape again. You can use a credit card to handle the repair costs, or you can go to CreditFresh to apply for an online loan in your home state. If your online loan application is approved, you can use the borrowed funds to pay for the repairs quickly. After that crisis is resolved, you’ll need to direct your attention to repayments.

Turn on GPSTracking

Turn GPS-tracking features on your laptop. Windows devices have Find My Device, and Apple devices have Find My Mac. If you ever lose your laptop, you can use these features to find its exact location. You just might be able to retrieve it.

If you think your laptop was stolen, don’t use GPStracking to retrieve it. You can give the proper authorities the location, and they may investigate it and recover it for you.

Autosave Your Work

You’ve been plugging away at an essay for hours when the program freezes. You reboot your computer and realize with horror that you lost everything you just wrote. You’ll have to start from scratch.

Whenever you’re using a program, turn on autosave. You can adjust the settings so that it saves a version of your work every five minutes.

Use Backups

Use cloud-based storage systems to back up the documents on your laptop. If your laptop ever breaks or gets stolen, you don’t have to worry about losing all of your hard work. You can still access online versions of your documents through your storage system account.

Don’t get caught by surprise. Prepare for these laptop disasters this term.

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