A Notebook is no different than a big-Laptop or a Desktop. It's a device carrying your precious digital "stuff." You need to ask yourself: "How big a disaster will it be to me if tomorrow the HD and MB are dead and unrecoverable?"
Until you've actually been in the situation of "losing all your stuff," many people poo-poo going through all the effort of a full backup plan with verification. Once you've had it happen, your mind will change.
IMHO.... If there's any important data on the machine (in multiple places or large quantity), then....
You need a verified, full backup on at least 1 external device that is refreshed regularly. Depending upon the rate at which content changes, you would have scheduled nightly, weekly, and monthly backups in a self-erasing rotation. External USB drives are typical media to hold the backups. Use 2 different external drives and alternate them. Store them in two different locations. So you have backup redundancy. After all, the externals are just HD's that can fail as well. They are cheap compared to losing all your "stuff."
Now the software to do it.....
Personally, I would spend the money on a product like Acronis Backup & Restore Advanced Workstation. (NOT the "Home" version) It's an Business-Level Product that is supported and updated regularly. For $75 or so you can do all that I mentioned in a automated and robust fashion. You can also pay a little more and add the Universal Restore option where if the laptop dies, you can restore the backup to an entirely different physical machine. (You might need a little computer-shop handholding help with this, but it definitely does work.)
Oh, and be sure to make the "Rescue CD's" using the backup software. That's what you'll boot from to do the restore. Note: These principles apply to any backup software and media that you might choose.
Other options are NAS Devices with RAID Configurations on your Home Network. Much more expensive, but more flexible/powerful on your home Network.
Note how I do not mention "Cloud" backup solutions. Does any of your data contain personal information? Do you want to potentially have the privacy of your data compromised? Do you want to turn it over to anonymous people running (correctly?) Web Servers? Personally, I say an emphatic NO.
But that's just personal choice. I trust my competency to do it right and keep it all "in house."
Good Luck!