Computers - Ah the joy & disappointment

I love my laptop, the best purchase ever. Portable, lightweight, and holds all my fave sites and info. But in 3 years it has had to be fixed 3x. My poor baby is in the shop again, the geek squad shop(3 weeks-ahhh) and I am lost without it. I write here from an old computer, the keyboard is a loud annoying monster and all of my fave sites and info are a million miles away. I should have backed up my info on a thingy(not sure what it's called) but I never did. I have been wandering, stranded, slowly finding my way back. Advice - back up your info and have a spare computer on-hand at all times.