Laptop overheating problems and solution - Belkin Laptop Cooling Stand

For future reference, if you ever run into laptop overheating problems and don't have a good solution, the solution that has worked for me with my Toshiba notebook PC is the Belkin Laptop Cooling Stand. I bought mine for $29 at BestBuy, but you can get it for $19 on Amazon:

(Note: The Amazon product title refers to it as a "Belkin F5L001 Laptop Cooling Pad", but the detailed description makes clear that it is a "Cooling Stand", meaning mainly that it does have a powerful, built-in, USB-powered fan.)

It adds space under your laptop, has a big cooling fan (USB-powered), and gives your laptop a more ergonomic angle (two choices). It is noisier than an overheating laptop, but it works a lot better than an overheated laptop.

It keeps most of the bottom of the laptop cool to the touch, which is as much as you could hope for. It virtually eliminates the need for the fan inside your notebook computer to run at all.

I almost tried a "cooling pad", but I went for broke to solve my problem. A cooling pad may be fine for some problems and may be better for people who travel a lot and do not want the bulky "stand".

Incidentally, when I traveled last time I had no overheating problem with my notebook PC on the hotel desk. Maybe the hard Formica and construction of the desk and better air flow in the hotel room avoided the problem. So, you may not need the cooling stand when you go on the road even if you need it in your home "office."

For reference, some coming symptoms of laptop overheating:

• Keyboard "dies"
• Hard drive "dies"
• Some keyboard keys "die" or there are "phantom" repeating keystrokes.
• System slows down and maybe the screen dims

-- Jack Krupansky