Mac Laptop Maintenance:
1. Permissions repaired Spotlight Disk Utility, select your hard drive, and in the First Aid tab use Repair Disk Permissions once every few months, and don't interrupt it once it's started. 
You should also Verify Disk once in a while, and if you come up with an error, the best thing would be to see the tech guys. (Or back up and start up from the Restore disk yourself holding Cmd-R.)
2. Time Machine Just plug in an external USB hard drive, go Ok to use as Time Machine, and plug in once in a while.
3. Amount of RAM  Go Apple, About this Mac, and check out the amount of Memory you have. In 2014, 8 GB would be best. You can bump up this amount by going back to where you bought your laptop, but it's a bit expensive.
4. Hard drive free space  Check how much hard drive space you have left by ctrl-clicking on the hard drive and Get Info. If you have less than 10% left, delete big files, or move them onto DVDs or an external hard drive. (If you would like your hard drive to show on the desktop, in the Finder, Preferences.) - Other than movies, a place to look for big files to trash is the Downloads folder.
5. Empty the trash  Don't forget to empty your trash when you are sure things there are no longer needed. Otherwise the deleting you did had no effect in freeing up hard drive space.
6 Updates of OS Make sure you are automatically updating the operating system of your laptop. Go to System Preferences, Software Updates, And make sure both Check for updates, and Download important updates automatically are checked. And update any applications that you think aren't working properly. Look for menu items that update
7. Restarting It is important to restart (or shut down/restart) your computer at least once every couple of days. Relaunching And in-between restarts, it's a good idea to re-launch applications; just File, Quit, and re-launch.
8. Keeping cool You've got to figure out a way to keep your laptop from getting too hot; things like a laptop holder/tray can be useful in this regard.
9. Don't use bitTorrenting services.
10. Anti-virus Macs don't often get viruses, but just to be safe, and especially if you bitTorrent etc, make sure your anti-virus software is running and up-to-date. Make sure it is updating "virus definitions" daily.
11. Firewall Macs are very secure with regard to hacking, but you need to make sure your settings are tight. In System Preferences, go to Security, and the Firewall tab. Make sure the Firewall is On. And then, as various sites try to access your computer, and you get a message saying so, allow access to trusted sites, and block those you are unsure about.