Most people need to take their computers with them when they travel, whether it’s because they are traveling for work, or because they want the convenience of being able to access the internet from a laptop rather than just a mobile device while they are at their destination.
Traveling with your laptop does naturally mean having to go through some extra steps to get through airport security quickly and will also mean you have an extra high-value item to worry about keeping safe while you are traveling. Here are some tips for traveling with a laptop:
Pack It Efficiently
You will probably want to keep your laptop in your cabin luggage, so that you can use it during your flight. Making sure you use luggage designed for this can be a good way to make sure you can easily take out your laptop if you need to at airport security, and that your laptop is well protected. A lot of cabin bags are designed with a removable laptop sleeve inside which the laptop can be x-rayed inside, so this can certainly make this easier.
Charge Where You Can
Airports and even planes often have places where you can plug in and charge your devices, but you can’t always be guaranteed that these services will be available or that they will be free to use. You should therefore charge whenever you get a chance, especially on long journeys with changes, and you should make sure you have the appropriate adaptor for any countries you’ll be visiting in your hand luggage. Backup power supplies, if they are an option for your laptop, are also a very good thing to consider. This can apply to your other devices like your tablet and phone, too.
Back-Ups
Make sure that you have a good back-up routine and know how you will recover the data securely if something happens to your laptop. You can learn about this at Secure Data Recovery. You should have secure back-ups to the cloud and ensure that you’ll be able to access important files from another device if your laptop lets you down while you are away, or worse, is lost, stolen, or broken.
Have a Plan For if You Have to Check Your Laptop
It is not uncommon for a plane to be too full for additional carry-on luggage before you board. When this happens, people have to check their cabin luggage, and this happens right before you board the plane. This can mean you won’t have access to the things you expected to have with you during the flight. If you were expecting to work on your laptop on the plane, have some stuff in mind that you can do with your phone, or at the very least a book to read, and store these in your pockets to make sure you’re not stuck unable to do anything productive (except read SkyMall) for the whole flight!
These are just some of the ways to make traveling on a plane with your laptop easier.