Inexpensive solution for hot or overheating laptops
First, I’ll make a long story short. As the non-school trained IT support staff (and everything else) for our small business, I’ve always tended towards trying to be brand loyal for our PC purchases - to simplify support and maintenance.
We used to be a loyal Dell shop. Our small business bought new Dell PCs every two years - and was happy with Dell’s value and service. Two huge missteps by Dell without any apology (relating to separate incidents of replacing a broken power supply and a defective video driver) led us to pursue other vendors. For lightweight, low-priced laptops, we found Averatec to be a great value. (For higher end laptops, we’re looking at Sony.) Our first Averatec was a home run. The second has been a near disaster - as it shuts down spontaneously when doing any “heavy” lifting (playing videos or photo editing).
Being the Scrappy Untechie, I suspected the root cause was an overheating laptop - since the tiny Averatec (2200 Series with 12.1″ monitor) became very hot to the touch during operation. I confirmed my guess by downloading and installing the FREE Notebook Hardware Control utilty. I was able to watch the internal temperature climb to a critical level at which point it automatically shut down to keep from damaging itself. I opened the laptop and cleaned any dust off the fan. I ran the BIOS utility at startup to calibrate the fan which didn’t help either. Finally, a few Google searches confirmed that many of the smaller Averatec laptops have overheating problems.
I’m not into buying gadgets. In this case, the solution was cheap and easy - and saved us from having to ditch an otherwise working laptop. We now have an Targus Chill Pad (also called a Chill Mat) under this laptop. Here’s the link to the Chill Pad at Amazon.com:
The small flat set of two fans fits under the laptop. In the case of the Averatec, the two new fans are quieter than the existing internal fan in the Averatec. In other words, when the Chill Pad fans prevent the Averatec fan from running, believe it or not there is less noise. The Chill Pad plugs into the laptop USB port for power - so no additional power cord required.
Beyond saving your overheating laptop from self-destruction, a second purpose is putting the Chill Pad under your laptop when you have your laptop resting on your legs. The Chill Pad keeps the ventilation going through your lapop (otherwise blocked by your legs) and your legs from becoming toasty.
All is well.
