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Well it amazed me that this is a typical issue. My Toshiba M400 the other day was running really warm during normal use, 60° C-70° C. So of course I had to take the whole thing apart and inspect. The first thing I did was to clean out the FAN, again a big yuck! Then I took off the CPU fan and heat sink and removed all the old CPU paste. I then cleaned the surfaces with Isopropyl alcohol, re-applied some new thermal paste, making sure that it is evenly coating the CPU and then re-assembled the notebook. So now my idle temperatures are more inline with when I got the notebook, 35° C-45° C. Here is a good article I found on the topic .
The other day I ran into an interesting problem with my ThinkPad T60. For some reason the machine would shut down after about 10-30 minutes. There were no indications to the cause from the error in the event logs in Vista, nor were there any obvious hardware sounds. Lucky for me I had another laptop at my disposal where I could swap the hard disk out to rule out some Vista related bug. By chance I noticed that the base of the machine was running very hot, the internal heat sink was running about 90° C (using my Fluke infra-red temperature sensor) around when the machine shutdown unexpectedly. So I suspected that the machine was going into thermal shutdown. The Core Duo CPU is rated at about 100° C, but other components on the system board may not be stable at such high temperatures. So the first thing I did was clean all that dust out of the heat sink and fan, yuk... Then I fired up the laptop again. This time it took the machine significantly...
Well that is not entirely true, I will by an ultra-portable notebook computer (< 4lbs) if it has the following characteristics (Yes I may be dreaming but by the EOY I think we might see such a beast): Core 2 Duo Processor (What is the deal with the LV and the ULV, they don't save that much power) 4 GB RAM (Do you really think 2GB is enough?) 1.8" SSD (>50MB/sec performance) or 2.5" 7200 rpm drive 64bit support (Must have support for x64 OS) LED backlit display Tablets should have dual touch screens The power adapter shouldn't weigh more that the notebook ;-) DVI/HDMI port 2-3x USB2 ports Express Card Slot Discrete graphics Price < $2000 All new notebooks are more than capable of running modern applications but the piece of technology that really needs to be left behind are the slow 1.8" 4200 rpm hard disks. I think we are at a point where the performance of ultra-portable notebooks doesn't have to suffer because of the small form factor. I think manufacturers...
The Dell tablet is an very sleek looking 4 lbs notebook. As with most of the tablet PCs this one foregoes the optical drive, opts for a low voltage processor, uses a 1280x800 LED display, has a capacitance touch N-Trig digitizer, and has a 100GB 1.8" 4200rpm hard disk. All in all, I like the build quality and the quality of the keyboard. The LED screen is exceptionally bright, with an ambient light sensor to help adjust brightness and extend battery life. Over all this machine is a great tablet. But due to the Low Voltage processor, slow 1.8" 4200 rpm hard disk, it may not be able to satisfy those in need of fast performance. The Toshiba M700 (btw, I own a M400 so I may be biased) would be a better machine for this as it has faster Core 2 Duo processors and support for 2.5" SATA disks which can go up to 7200 rpm. The Tablet XT's battery life is fair, with 2+ hours with the default battery. In my mind the Lenovo Thinkpad X61 Tablet would...