How to make safer my computer and its data?

[according]

I am going to student's hostel and I would like to know if there is any ways how to make my computer and its data safer.

[yoshiro aoki]

ZoneAlarm is a good software firewall. This protects on the internet.

Its good idea to backup important data to nice size keyring. 8gb is a nice size for it. Hard for people to steal the keyring because with you always.

To protect data use encryption (PGP on Windows, GPG on Linux).
Its very easy to use.

So, because of encryption, I can lose my laptop and nobody can have my data...even if I am logged in:). I have used for many years now this way.

For hostel, I say encryption is your friend.
ok, good luck