"Shaun Van Poecke" wrote in news:i0wjh.12636
:

Is anyone shockproofing their laptop, or just sitting them on a table?



I also like to put in a plug for a great little idea I came up with to
save your laptops from overheating...WITHOUT giving "them" $100 for a
stupid "cooler" in the process......

The idiots that package laptops have a flaw. Their desks must have an
open flyscreen surface. Look on the bottom of most laptops, 1mm from the
desk it sits on when running, and you'll find the MAIN FAN INTAKE
specifically designed to make sure it never gets enough cooling air and
the air that it does get is the same as putting a vacuum cleaner to
whatever it is sitting on and blowing it into the guts of it. As you can
see, this is totally idiotic. IF you sit this laptop on ANYTHING made of
something soft, like a car seat, the surface of anything a human likes to
sit on, a bed, YOUR LAP, etc., the fan intake is COMPLETELY sealed by
what its sitting on to ensure it will overheat. Chip makers know how
stupid these designers are, so they put temperature sensors inside the
chips to shut them down when, not if, this happens.

I have a better idea and it works great.....for a LOT less than $100.

Go to any electrical department of your favorite MEN'S store (Home Depot,
Lowes, etc.) and look for the Wiremold section. Measure your fan intake
on the bottom of the laptop before you go. My fan is 1.5" intake so I
bought a 1 3/4" wide strip of Wiremold, the stick-on surface wire conduit
you can easily cut that comes in two pieces, the base and the clip-on
cover. Mine is about 3/4" thick when put together. One stick will do 30
laptops.

Cut a piece off the long stick that is the same width as your laptop,
from side to side. My fan is in the left back corner on my Gateway and
the heat pours out the left side where the damned fan INTAKE should have
been...if you hold the laptop off the surface it sits on. Ok, now, pop
apart the base and cover of your laptop-wide piece and sit the cover
aside until the end of the installation. Lay the base across the upside
down laptop and mark the fan intake for cutting a hole in the base so the
fan can suck air from INSIDE the assembled Wiremold. While you're
measuring, make sure the Wiremold also won't be covering up any other
important cooling holes (mine doesn't) across the width of the laptop.
If there are other holes, cut holes in the base so they can breathe, too,
when it's running on the bed. Cut out the holes including the fan
intake.

Now, pull off the protective plastic from the super sticky double-sided
tape the Wiremold came with and carefully position the base across the
width of the laptop bottom and stick it down hard. Once the base is in
place, snap on the cover to finish the creation of the "cooling duct
work".

The fan now has, no matter what it is sitting on, an intake duct with two
intakes, one port, one starboard, that sucks sideways, not all the
dust/dirt off the desktop and car seat. The ductwork also raises the
back of my laptop so the keyboard has a nice little tilt to it for easier
typing than laying flat. I no longer have to prop it up with
"something" every time I sit it on a car seat or watch a movie in bed.
Cooling is much improved and warm, instead of hot, air comes out the
cooling outlet, especially when it's working hard to decode HDTV from my
Hauppauge HDTV to USB receiver plugin.