10. Sorry, honey, I punched the laptop: Striking a laptop computer with a fist, even while the laptop is closed, will jostle the logic board and stop the computer.

9. Facebook freak-out: A teenage girl discovering a picture on Facebook of her boyfriend kissing another girl becomes outraged and flings her laptop off the desk, sending it crashing onto the hardwood floor.

8. Run over by car? This is more popular than you would think. For example, Mum arrives at school to pick up the kids and opens the boot for all the school bags. Little Johnny is talking to his mate and forgets to put his bag in the boot and leaves it on the ground behind the back wheel of the car. Mum assumes all bags are safely in the boot and reverses out of her car space. Whoops, one very dead laptop!

7. Temper Toss (a subset of the "Facebook freak-out"): Thrown objects can easily break a laptop's screen. If you receive bad news on your mobile phone, resist the temptation to throw it near your open laptop.

6. Hurling. If you puke on your laptop, don't even tell the laptop computer repairer what the liquid is, if they know it's bodily fluid, they won't want to fix it.

5. Falling asleep on your Dell laptop: Your sleeping bodyweight can bend the case, and may also ruin the screen.

4. Laptop as foot stool, or scale: No Laptop computer is designed to support your weight, so stepping on your laptop will almost certainly break it.

3. Ear buds as laptop terrorist: Closing your laptop with your ear buds inside will crack the screen. This kind of laptop repair is growing with alarming speed. It seems we love our ear buds, yet forget that they are not made of cushy foam.

2. Your 5-year-old discovers gravity! Any time you drop your laptop from more than 2 feet, it can shake loose a chip or board, and break the machine.

1. Coffee shops hate your laptop: Liquid spills on a laptop's keyboard short them out every time. Maybe it's the caffeine that makes us jittery, but so many laptops are killed by coffee there should be a warning on the paper cup.