Ten ways to lose your laptop

By Alun Williams

Posted on 13 Jun 2002 at 17:18

Laptops are delicate machines, but - as insurance companies know - they don't always receive tender loving care.

As part of analysing laptop insurance claims over the last five years, company staff at Complete Computer Cover have maintained a league table of the strangest and most unfortunate ways in which people have managed to mangle their machines.

Entries in the top ten include the woman who left her laptop on the drive and then reversed a car over it and the schoolchild whose mother smashed the screen by dropping an iron on it. (Is a theme emerging?) Another misfortune is the classic 'left on roof of car', an oversight to be discovered on the first corner of the journey, presumably.

Deemed the most disastrous demise, however, is the claim of a Yorkshire student. This claimant provided highly-detailed diagrams showing just exactly how he had dropped his laptop off a bridge, 20ft down into a river, after being pushed from behind by a friend...

On a more serious note, the insurance company states that around 60 per cent of laptop claims concern accidental damage, mostly of the knocking and dropping variety. The remaining forty per cent involve theft, mostly occurring in offices and schools.

Here's that top ten in full:

1. Dropped off a bridge into a river


2. Dropped iron on screen


3. Dog chewed through cable (unharmed) and shorted machine


4. Reversed over by car


5. Spilt milkshake on keyboard


6. Left on car roof and dropped off


7. Fell down stairs


8. Water damage in hotel in Zambia


9. Book dropped on keyboard


10. Fell out of van