I’ve mentioned before that I have a bit of a problem with my drafting work: my software works great on Windows XP, but not on Windows 7 and beyond. It’d cost thousands to upgrade to modern versions of AutoCAD… thousands I don’t have. I have one somewhat elderly laptop still running XP; when it inevitably goes down, I’ll be kinda screwed.
I stumbled across a laptop in a pawn shop today that was actually running XP. I’ve been looking in pawn shops for a few years now; it seems to be standard practice for pawn shops to scrape laptops clean and load Windows 7 or later on them. As this laptop was only $70, I bought it with the intention of loading software on it…and then putting it into storage for the day when my good, old laptop take a dirt nap.
The question is: how to store it? First task will be to clean it… run compressed air through it to blow out any dust, and wipe the surface clean to get rid of the blood and other bodily fluids that no doubt coat it (it’s a pawn shop laptop, after all). But beyond that, anybody got any suggestions? Is it best to store laptops with the battery charged, or drained? It’ll have to be stored wrapped in plastic to keep it dry, but maybe also wrapped in foil? Or would that be *worse?*