My laptop has always been just a little bit marginal in the cooling
department. In an office environment it's ok. At the nav station in
a Florida summer, not so much. It has even been known to shut down
from the thermal overload. After some fooling around, I decided that
part of the problem was that the little rubber "feet" did not provide
enough clearance for adequate airflow. Any flat surface it was
sitting on would get hot to the touch. I thought about various ways
of mounting a fan (feasible in my setup but noisy and probably
overkill.) Instead,I picked up a sheet of Dri-Deck panel from West.
If you're not familiar with it, it's a self draining plastic thingy
that is the equivalent of a teak cockpit grate for a locker. It's
about the right size, easy to trim, and placed upside down, provides
terrific passive cooling. It's fairly non-slip and easy to secure
anywhere you want it. Problem solved.

Now, according to Usenet protocol, several people should be along
momentarily to tell me

* They thought of it first
* It can't possibly work
* It works too well
* It destroys the environment
* Screw the environment
* I should've mounted a 12000 btu airconditioner under it
* I shouldn't worry about it
* Joshua Slocum only had a rusty clock with one hand
* For only $8k, I could have a real maritime PC
* People that want computers on their boats are jerks
* Only an idiot would try to run a PC on a sailboat in a Florida

Oh wait, that one is true.


__________________________________________________ __________
Glen "Wiley" Wilson usenet1 SPAMNIX at worldwidewiley dot com
To reply, lose the capitals and do the obvious.

Take a look at cpRepeater, my NMEA data integrator, repeater, and
logger at http://www.worldwidewiley.com/