New laptop!

madtownidiot · 25 Sep 2010

My experience with Dell and HP laptops is they tend to overheat, and generally you get what you pay for. The one I've been using for the past month or so was shipped in november of 2006 for a little over $2000, probably couldn't be sold now for more than about $300, but it does everything I need it to do and it's more than fast enough.. 21 seconds to reboot from the SSD and it has no problem running VMs.. but it kind of makes for an oxymoron to call it a laptop if it overheats and stops working if you keep it on your lap, don't you think?

pparks1 · 25 Sep 2010

madtownidiot said:

My experience with Dell and HP laptops is they tend to overheat, and generally you get what you pay for.

Every company that I have ever worked for have used Dell's...I've supported hundreds of them and they have been very solid. A few bad models here or there, but that happens with all companies.

madtownidiot · 25 Sep 2010

pparks1 said:

madtownidiot said:

My experience with Dell and HP laptops is they tend to overheat, and generally you get what you pay for.

Every company that I have ever worked for have used Dell's...I've supported hundreds of them and they have been very solid. A few bad models here or there, but that happens with all companies.

Exactly what I meant.. the higher end builds are extremely solid. I think this one was one of the very first to come with a core 2, and except for a new HDD, nothing has been replaced, far as I can tell

boohbah · 25 Sep 2010

Maxxwire said:

boohbah said:

excellent post, we bought a logitech n100 cooling pad with the laptop so thats covered.

How is the fan noise level on the logitech n100? I bought a Belkin cooling pad that runs off of USB power and it is so much louder than the laptop that I unplugged it and now use it as a stand.

~Maxx~
.

Its surprisingly quiet
obviously you can hear a whir but i had a noisier desktop a while ago.
its since died
but it is not silent,

boohbah · 25 Sep 2010

You also need to teach her how to turn off WiFi as it will scan for available networks and connect on its own.

we discovered a switch that kills wifi /network connections and has a led indicator that lets you know whether its on or off.
we also learned to disable the trackpad when using the mouse the cursor would jump into different lines making you type nonsense and half sentences.
we christened it Yoda speak.

Maxxwire · 25 Sep 2010

boohbah said:

Its surprisingly quiet
obviously you can hear a whir but i had a noisier desktop a while ago. its since died but it is not silent

I must have gotten the wrong version of the Belkin cooling pad because the moment I plugged it in to a USB port on my HP laptop it made a disturbingly loud sound. I now use it as a stand for my HP laptop without the fan and the laptop has never even come close to getting hot to with its cooling vents several inches from the surface of the desk.

~Maxx~
.

pebbly · 25 Sep 2010

I have an inspiron 5100, inspiron 9400 and an XPS M1710 , all of them tend to run a little on the hot side ,so I use a little 3rd party app called I8kfangui Dell Inspiron Inspiron/Latitude/Precision fan control to keep the temps down ,along with the regular cleaning of the inlet and exhaust vents :)

gregrocker · 25 Sep 2010

It might help others if someone who regularly deep cleans the dust from their laptop explains how they do it.

I've never gotten deeper than a powerful shop vac with plastic attachment used on outside vents, which even then needs to be guarded against static shock if it touches metal.

madtownidiot · 25 Sep 2010

Not advisable to try taking apart a laptop unless you have the service manual. On the other hand, most laptop manufacturers use a common blueprint between several different models and once you've done one, all other models using the same chassis are pretty easy to work on.

merkat106 · 25 Sep 2010

I have experience with Lenovo.

I know others have told you to create an image of the hard drive. That is fine, But I'd also make the Lenovo Recovery discs as well.

Don't get rid of all the Lenovo bloatware. I have discovered on my Lenovo laptop that when I removed one piece of bloatware, I lost features such as the buttons above the keyboard. I couldn't adjust the volume or quickly disable the wireless card.

So research what each of the bloatware does before removing them.

But once you do, try this: Download | The PC Decrapifier to streamline the removal of bloatware etc.