Laptop cooling pads

[porsche911girl]

Do they really work?

I have a Dell Inspiron 600m that was one of the first ones made back in the summer of 2003. Dell has since discontinued the model due to severe overheating issues. Mine is no exception.

It will get so hot to the touch in the area below the screen that I know that can't be good for it. And I don't have to keep it on very long for it to get really hot. It's already burned part of the screen along with the plastic area next to the touchpad. I've gone thru a new fan and heatsink, new hard drive, reformat of hard drive at least twice, reinstall of WinXP every year (at least if not more), had numerous system crashes, etc.

I bought a Targus Tornado Chill Pad the other day from Best Buy because they were having a sale on them, and even after reading numerous bad reviews, I figured that if it worked for a week, at least I'd only be out a small amt. of money, rather than a large amount.

However, it's only worked marginally well. As I'm not in a position to get a new laptop right now, I'm hoping I can keep this one limping along.

So is there any decent product that works to significantly cool a laptop down, or am I just screwed?

[campbellcj]

Some machines have power management settings that let you throttle back the CPU speed (and thus power/heat) or increase fan speed. You might try that if available on your machine. Check the Control Panel under Power and see what's there.

[PcarPhil]

Originally posted by porsche911girl
It will get so hot to the touch in the area below the screen that I know that can't be good for it.

I had this problem with a laptop and ended up removing the plastic trim piece under the screen. The heatsink is located under this trim and running it without trim reduced the operating temps dramatically. So much so that the laptop doesn't shut itself off due to overheating.

I'd try this before trying a cooling pad.

[Joeaksa]

And whats wrong with being screwed? I like it at times...

Funny you have a 600m, I have used one for the last 4 years and love it. Yes, it does have warts.

This series of Dell has power plug issues (they get loose) as well as the heating situation.

To tell the truth I have not had any problems with heating, but then I may have an earlier or later model. Does yours have the fan inside? Ever taken the keyboard off and cleaned the dust and hair and such out? Might help. As well turning the speed of the CPU down just a hair might help.

BTW, have made several mods to my machine that really helped. Am now running 1 gig RAM but the biggest mod was going to a 7200 RPM hard drive. This increased my access and boot up speed by a lot and you could really see the difference.

Joe