wowow T400's price raised

[archer6]

I concur with your comments on the Dell as I've tried one of those. Regarding the X61, the palm rest does indeed get warm when using Wi-Fi which I do 100% of the time. However it should not be scorching hot. There may be an issue with the machine you are experiencing that with.
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Cheers...
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[pianowizard]

I guess it's a neat way to trick people to think that their laptop is thinner than it really is.

Indeed, and I find it absurd that so many manufacturers are trying so hard to make their laptops as thin as possible. For me, weight matters much more than thickness. If I remember correctly, thickness wasn't a big issue until the MacBook Air came out, which Apple advertised as the thinnest laptop ever made. Since then, other manufacturers have been trying to compete with it. That was at least the second time Apple had started a bad trend -- the first time was going widescreen.

The Thinkpad X6x series have such a problem as well. When the wireless card in my gf's X61 runs at full power, the right palmrest and the area around it gets scorching hot.

My X60s had this problem too, and so I sold it after just three weeks.

ThinkPad R, complain to Dell about the overheating problem and see what they have to say -- it's possibly just a defective unit and Dell might send you a replacement that would be better. Switching to another brand doesn't guarantee that you won't have this problem again, because MANY laptops get really warm in the parlmrest. That's one of the several reasons why I use mainly desktop computers these days, and use laptops only when absolutely necessary (i.e. when traveling).

[dr_st]

I concur with your comments on the Dell as I've tried one of those. Regarding the X61, the palm rest does indeed get warm when using Wi-Fi which I do 100% of the time. However it should not be scorching hot. There may be an issue with the machine you are experiencing that with.

Normally, it's just a bit too warm, enough to be a little uncomfortable. The problem is that the wireless card had intermittent disconnect issues, which were solved by turning off power management, and setting to maximum power. Then it became scorching hot. I now turned the power down a bit (to about 40% of the maximum), and it's cooler. Cool enough to be usable, and so far hasn't been disconnecting. But only time will tell if it's stable.

I tend to believe that this particular unit may be a bit defective, and if I find time I might just call IBM up and ask them to examine it. But I wouldn't hold my breath. The hot palmrest seems to be a known issue on all X6x units, and the definition of what's normal, and what's not, what's usable and what's not are so vague and individual, that I am not sure they will even agree that there is a problem. If I press them, they might swap out the WiFi card for a different one, which if I'm lucky will run a bit cooler. Maybe they can install a second fan in there, if the motherboard supports it (never bothered enough to open it up and check), but I doubt that it does, since this is not a WWAN model. All and all, it's a lot of "maybe"s, and so far my girlfriend is stuck with this problem, which understandably makes her upset, coming from an ice-cool X32 (to which, incidentally, she migrated from an overheating DELL Inspiron). The sad thing, is that there is no alternative I can suggest to her, since she cannot stand widescreens, and X61 is the last non-widescreen ultraportable.