Advice already given is generally good. In most laptops, the HD "sleeps" whenever it's not called on to move stuff around, so leaving the computer on doesn't prevent it from starting/stopping, which are the high stress things a hard drive does.

One thing not mentioned is that you should prepare a "Boot Disk" if you don't have one. IF the laptop has a floppy drive, you can usually fit the boot data, and at least enough accessory files for maintenance on one or two floppies to allow you to start the computer if the hard drive does fail. Assuming you have a floppy drive, put a new (blank or expendable) disk in, in Windows Explorer, right click on the A:\ drive and choose format. In WinXP there should be a box near the bottom of the format choices that says "Make an MS-DOS boot disk." Put a check mark there, and hit GO, and you should get a floppy disk, with a boot sector and about 14 files on it. Put it away just in case. In other Windows versions, the box on the format selection may say something like "copy system files" instead of "make a boot disk." The effect is the same.

A few laptops don't have a floppy drive, or have removable ones that may not be installed. USUALLY, if the floppy drive isn't available, the machine should be set up to boot from CD, so you could make a boot CD in similar fasion. The difficulty is that you have to reboot and go into System Setup to tell easily whether the machine is setup to boot from a CD.

Overheating is about the only real problem you might encounter from leaving a laptop on, assuming of course that it's plugged in so the battery doesn't run down. If you make sure you have good air circulation and don't accidentally toss a blanket on it, it shouldn't harm it. If it seems to be excessively warm, turn a fan on it to blow the heat away. A hard surface is better than a "fuzzy" one, and you may want to make sure it's where the heat won't damage the surface.

If you COPIED key files to CDs for backup, they should be ok. If you used "Windows Backup," you should be aware that this program is notorious for NOT BEING ABLE TO RESTORE stuff that it's backed up. While it sometimes works, I wouldn't trust it as the only archive for my data. Don't worry too much about the program stuff, since you should have installation disks for it; but copies of all the .do*, .xl*, etc. files for work you (or your laptop owner) may have produced are recommended. Documents, Spreadsheets, Email Folders, Address Books, downloaded pictures, and data files for any other programs are the main things you want to save.

In WinXP, Windows Explorer, you can click on Search, Search All Files, Filename containing *.do* and get ALL the Word documents and templates. Ctl-A selects them ALL, regardless of where they are. Ctl-C copies. Go back to Folders, and Ctl-V will paste them ALL in a folder of your choice. Burn them to CD, delete the copies, and repeat for other file extensions of interest.

John