Laptop Skins: Express Yourself With A Personalized Cover

Personalizing your cell phone or iPod with covers or "skins" is nothing new.  You can find hundreds even thousands of skins both ready-made and custom.  Now you can make your laptop unique with laptop skins too.  

Laptop skins stick to the cover of your laptop and add color, brightness and even excitement to what would otherwise be a dull, common, silver or gray metallic-type lid.  Your laptop skin can have custom art, or reproductions of Van Gogh or DaVinci; or choose textures, stripes, dots, and swirls in just about any color.  Skins can be sports team logos, camouflage, nature scenes, flowers an flourishes, or your personalized messages.  Or try pop, retro, or animal prints.  Some companies will make a custom skin from your own photo or design.  There are thousands of design possibilities, and can be as individual as you are.  

Skins aren't just all decorative.  They can also protect your laptop from minor scuffs, marks and scratches that you get from the usual wear and tear of dragging your laptop everywhere and shoving it in and out of your laptop case or bag.  You can get skins to fit most laptops, including sizes 12", 14-15", 15.4" and 17" wide. There are also laptop skin makers who will custom fit your skin to your laptop.   

Made from vinyl or a polyurethane material and stuck to your laptop cover with an adhesive, a skin is normally designed to be removable, and some are reusable (although you don't want to take it off too often as the glue will wear off eventually).  Different companies use different qualities of glue, some with disappointing results that either leave a residue when the skin is removed, or failing to let you r-stick the skin to your laptop. One well known adhesive is a product from 3-M(R) called "Comply", so be sure to ask your vendor what they use that or something similar for adhesive.

If you would like to design your own laptop skin, you should  be sure to use a high-resolution print or photo, at least 200 dpi or higher.  This translates to 2400 x 200 pixels if you want a 12 x 10 inch cover. The higher the resolution, the higher the print quality, and the better your skin will look when printed.  Usually the vendor will accept a JPEG upload, but some also accept a GIF, TIFF or PSD file.  Check with your skin vendor to get their specific file requirements for your size of laptop. Most vendors can accept a file via email.  

Finally, find out whether your skin manufacturer recommends wet or dry installation for your skin.  You  may have to apply soapy water to the skin for best results, but most of the time, dry application is fine.  Your skin manufacturer should provide complete instructions for installing your skin and how to keep it in its best condition.  

Say something about yourself by choosing from among the many laptop skins to add a burst of personality and color to a normally dull piece of equipment.