A laptop that's hard to type or point with isn't much of a help when you're getting things done away from your desk. But you can fix and replace your keys and touchpad rather than take a big credit card hit.

Hard drives and optical drives are the most failure-prone items on a laptop. They're also among the easiest to swap out, upgrade or, in some cases, live without. Here are the best fixes for saving, replacing and speeding up your storage.

Is there life for laptops after a screen goes dead? Absolutely. Despite the perceived difficulty, you can replace a laptop screen for much less than the official cost, or turn your laptop into a very space-efficient desktop computer with a cheap monitor.