Step #1 - Immediately disconnect the power cord from your laptop and remove the battery. If you've never removed your battery, learn how to do it now so you can do it quickly if you need to.  This step is the most critical as you want to stop the contact of electricity with liquid ASAP.

Step #2 - Turn your laptop upside down and drain all the liquid you can from it. If you have a vacuum handy, you can cover the end of the vacuum hose with a cloth and very carefully try to vacuum some of the liquid out. Take care not to vacuum off parts of your computer.

Step #3 - Pour tepid water over your keyboard. Yes, you did just drain all the liquid you spilled, but now you have to wash off the sugar from your soft drink, or the acid from your coffee. Note: if you spilled plain water into your computer, obviously you can skip this step and the next one.

Step #4 - Turn your laptop upside down and drain all the water you can from it. If you have a vacuum handy, you can cover the end of the vacuum hose with a cloth and very carefully try to vacuum some of the water out. Take care not to vacuum off parts of your computer.

Step #5 - If possible, disassemble to the best of your ability... remove covers from bottom, open CD drive door (poke the end of a paperclip into the tiny little hole on your CD drive door to open it when you have no power to the system). Do NOT take anything apart that do are not sure you can put back later.

Step #6 - Set your open laptop up on a rack, or two low stacks of books - anything that will allow air to circulate around and through it from all possible angles.

Step #7 - If you have any fans, set them up to blow air on your laptop from different angles. If not, try to set it in a place with good air circulation.

Step #8 - Be patient. This is the hard one. You must wait at least 72 hours so your computer can dry out completely. If your computer has any chance of coming back to life, you cannot start it up again if there is any possibility of any moisture still being inside of it. Wait it out.

Step #9 - Once you are sure everything has had enough time to dry out completely, reconnect your power cord and try to start it up. Don't reinstall the battery yet.

Step #10 - If it comes back to life, check all components (modem, CD drive, etc.) to see if they are all working. Be aware that even if it survives, there may be damage that you cannot see, such as residual acid from coffee that will eat away into the circuit board tracings. This means that you may have shortened the lifespan of your laptop.

For this reason it is essential that you make backups of all your work on a frequent basis. One very convenient way to backup your system, and also have all your information available to access on any other computer, is by using an external hard drive. Today's external hard drives have large storage capabilities, are relatively inexpensive, and plug easily into a USB port.

Lastly, call your favorite computer repair technician and see about having them take a look at your laptop and assess any possible damage that may have been done. Even if your system does not come back to life, most likely your hard drive will still be intact and the information can be transferred to a new system.