What's the difference between these two sentences: It is easy to spend all my time traveling and then not have time to open up my laptop and work.
It is easy to spend all my time traveling and then not have time to open my laptop and work.
What's the difference between open and open up?

Question

Answer

Pretty much no difference.  In some contexts OPEN and OPEN UP may have different connotations, but in this case I'd say they are the same.

Answer

To me, ‘open up’ sounds odd or imprecise for a laptop, but not clearly wrong, because laptops are designed to be easy to open.

Both sentences lack fluidity which hides the oddness of ‘up’ a little bit.