Just a few suggestions from personal live-performance-with-laptop experience:
Whatever you have your laptop sitting on use velcro strips to get to stick in place. Otherwise, you are just asking for your very lightweight laptop to be knocked off by a drunken roadie or even fellow bandmate.
Don't even consider putting your laptop on any kind of a microphone-stand type of arrangement, not even the tripod type. You're just asking for a bad spill.
Make sure that any audio, USB, Firewire, power-adapter or other cables connected to your laptop have some kind of stress-relief. Otherwise, one swift yank on one of these can destroy your whole set - and probably the laptop. (I have a permanently disabled IBM laptop with TWO damaged USB ports ... the price of experience!) This can be as simple as wire-ties attaching the cables firmly to a table leg.
Don't have any connectors ... audio, USB, etc. hanging over the edge of a table or anywhere they can be bumped.
Your laptop should be the LAST piece of gear that gets setup, and the FIRST piece that gets put away IMMEDIATELY in its HARDSHELL case. Laptop bags get squashed. Cheap plastic case get cracked and poked through by mic stands. I now have a very expensive aluminum Zero Haliburton brand laptop case ... worth every penny.
Buy and use the Kensington anti-theft kit.
