What if You Lost Your Gadgets?
How much of your life is stored on electronic gadgets? Think about it for a moment. Stop and think about all those recent images on your camera, all those telephone numbers on your mobile phone and all those important email messages on your laptop.
You may also have a PDA (personal digital assistant) on which you may have stored all of your contact details. Consider for a moment what would be the impact on your life of losing the data stored on these gadgets?
If we just consider your mobile telephone there is a high probability that, sooner or later, your phone will become damaged, lost or stolen. Last year in the UK over 600,000 telephones were dropped down toilets, 55,000 were left in taxis and 200,000 went through the wash in washing machines. When was the last time you backed up your sim card data. At the very least you should consider some cheap mobile phone insurance. While this can’t protect your valuable data it is an affordable way to get a replacement.
Cameras, like mobile phones, are small, lightweight and portable making them easy to carry but also easy to lose. Modern, small, lightweight cameras are particularly susceptible to loss and damage. They can be bumped around inside luggage, dropped and have heavy item placed on top of them. Like mobile phones there is no way that camera insurance can compensate for the loss of images stored on the camera, but it is an affordable way to get yourself a replacement if your camera is damaged or lost.
The most significant gadget in my life is my laptop computer. Most damage or loss relating to laptops occurs outside the home and since around 17% of laptop owners routinely take their laptops with them when travelling this makes them very vulnerable. So when was the last time that you backed up the data from your laptop to some form of secure storage? Losing my laptop would be a disaster for me as this is where I store all of my contact details, emails and images.
As for other gadgets, some laptop insurance can’t ensure that your laptop will not be stolen or damaged but it can make it less financially painful to get a replacement.
I strongly recommend that you stop and consider the vital data that you have stored on various gadgets and take steps to back it all up. Then make sure you get yourself some affordable gadget insurance as this will at least enable you to get replacements quickly.