Top Airline Travel Tips When Traveling With Your Laptop

Keep it with you at all times. It goes with you on the flight as carry-on baggage. Do not store it in the overhead storage area; it could get knocked around by someone else. Absolutely do not put your laptop in with your other baggage. Baggage handlers aren’t expecting expensive electronics to be in the stored baggage areas and you can’t expect it to be treated like a fragile object.

You may be required to remove your laptop from its carrying case and turn it on to demonstrate to Security/Customs that the laptop is exactly that – a functioning computer. A good way to save time if you anticipate this happening is to turn on your laptop earlier and leave it in suspend mode. This is a good reason to ensure that your laptop battery is kept charged. When your laptop is examined in this manner it is often called “hand checking”.

Letting your laptop go through the x-ray equipment will not harm your laptop. The magnetic field which is generated is not enough to cause harm to your hard drive or cause damage to your data. Metal detectors, on the other hand, can cause damage and request politely that Security/Customs do not use the metal detector but do a hand check instead.

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