There can be little more disruptive to your business than having a vital computer system go offline, whether that’s the payment terminal you use to collect income from your clients or the laptop used to send out emails, invoices or manage client appointment details.

That’s especially true for business laptops, where we’ve shifted to lighter and thinner models that make for great mobile workforces, at the cost of general repairability.

The thicker and heavier laptops that predominated 20 or more years ago were a pain to carry around in a hefty laptop bag, but they tended to use more individual components and were easier to open and examine.

That combination meant that if a single port, screen or keyboard part stopped working, for example, it was a simplerprocess to replace them.

These days, ultrabook style devices such as Apple’s popular MacBooks or Microsoft’s Surface Pro use totally integrated systems where many of the controller, memory, CPU and most other functions are on a single board.

Keeping them thin and light means that they’re often less screwed together and more glued together – making repairs more difficult and as a result more costly.