Something is up with my T43.

[hootpie]

...other than all the build quality issues.

The fan is crazy. I'm sitting here next to my GF (she has a 2 year old Dell Inspiron 4150 laptop with a p4 2.4ghz in it) and my fan is going like crazy. I've rebooted and triple checked that it's set to "max battery life" and it's still loud. As for what I have been doing: word processing and nothing else.

My girlfriend's laptop, 2 years older than mine and with a REGULAR P4 @ 2.4ghz is SILENT. It's not making a peep, yet my laptop sounds like it's trying to win the Daytona 400. The kicker? Her laptop is cooler than mine right now.

Someone hold me

[Jmmmmm]

umm...have you read any of the posts in this forum? Every other post is about the fan issue on t43s. Check out one of those threads, and look at the voltage sticky at the top to see about undervolting.

[hootpie]

umm...have you read any of the posts in this forum? Every other post is about the fan issue on t43s. Check out one of those threads, and look at the voltage sticky at the top to see about undervolting.

I'll take a look. It's doing something new now...the fan sounds like it's struggling. It's making this noise which I can only explain by comparing it to a baseball card in bicycle spokes.

[chrisnyc]

If you've purchased your T43 recently and are able to return it, my advice would be to do so. Based on your post, you're never going to be happy with it. Do read the many threads and posts about the T43 fan. I purchased my T42 about 3 months ago, when the T43's were being introduced and both were available, and I chose the T42 because of concern about the fan noise. My T42 fan does run constantly, but mainly at the lowest setting -- I use my notebook for basic tasks that are not processor or memory heavy -- and even in a very quiet room I basically have to put my ear down to the fan to hear it -- so it is essentially silent.
To each his own -- many report that the T43 fan doesn't bother them -- it does bother you, there's no way to change it ; so return it if you can. If they're still available, you might want to consider a T42. That's my opinion on this.

[kyrotech]

strange is there is no ECA report about the FAN of the T43 yet, but users are reporting many issues with it... so

[hootpie]

I gave undervolting a go to see if that would silence the fan...it doesn't. I think the fan on this thing is set to always be on and to just speed up when it needs to. My idle temp was ~52C before the undervolt and ~42-44C after. I'm running cooler, but the fan (I've been sitting in a quiet room paying close attention) behavior has not changed one bit.

Edit: Undervolting added ~20min to my battery life...did nothing for the fan though.

[ddutta]

Before returning the T43, ensure you have tried to set the CPU speed to adaptive and fan sped to low. It works for me! My T43 makes less noise than my T42 as I can control my T43 fan speed from the battery maximizer but I cant do so form my T42. Also the air from my T42 (1.6Ghz) is hotter than that from my T43 (2Ghz).

I was very concerned about the fan noise before I bought my T43. I think beyond a point its a personal preference. I bought the T43 becuase it was $200 cheaper than a T42.

[Jmmmmm]

I gave undervolting a go to see if that would silence the fan...it doesn't. I think the fan on this thing is set to always be on and to just speed up when it needs to. My idle temp was ~52C before the undervolt and ~42-44C after. I'm running cooler, but the fan (I've been sitting in a quiet room paying close attention) behavior has not changed one bit.

Edit: Undervolting added ~20min to my battery life...did nothing for the fan though.

Yeah, unfortunately with the t43, you can't control the fan speed with CHC (or any other program that we know of). The only way it can help is by lowering the running temp, so the fan will go on high less often. I'm not happy with the fan either, but CHC helps. I'm just hoping that eventually we will get a way to control the fan speed, or ibm comes out with a bios update that (helps to) solve this problem.

[hootpie]

Yeah, unfortunately with the t43, you can't control the fan speed with CHC (or any other program that we know of). The only way it can help is by lowering the running temp, so the fan will go on high less often. I'm not happy with the fan either, but CHC helps. I'm just hoping that eventually we will get a way to control the fan speed, or ibm comes out with a bios update that (helps to) solve this problem.

I have the same model as you. Has your fan ever turned off or been completely silent? I'm using CHC and I set it to adaptive and tried all that other good stuff...nothing

If they're going to release a BIOS update to fix it, I'll keep my T43, but otherwise I'm going to go with the T42.