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Not all laptops are designed equal

Posted by caitlyn on · 6 comments
Fitzcarraldo's Blog; By Fitzcarraldo 		Mail this story
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Over time it is common for fans in laptops to become clogged with dust, fluff and even hair. The symptoms are usually a hotter laptop and a noisier fan that runs more frequently. The solution is to open up the laptop’s body in order to get at the fan and remove the crud with tweezers and by blowing. However, dismantling many laptops to access the fan makes the Mission Impossible break-in look simple, and this seems to be getting worse as laptop prices continue to decrease. If you are not confident you can unblock the fan yourself, you’ll have to find a local computer repair shop and you may find it’s not cheap.

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Comments (6)

caitlyn Story submitter ·
Over the past year I’ve received two laptops, both Toshibas, in non-working condition. If I could fix them I could have them for development and testing. I am decidedly hardware challenged (hence the dummies reference) and yet I was able to get both of them going again. One needed an internal cleaning, some connections reseated and a new battery. The other needed a fan to be cleaned so that it would turn again and a shorted battery pack that needed to be replaced. I’ve been inside a number of laptops over the years and I have had the best luck at being able to service the Toshiba products. Of course, your mileage may vary.
Bob_Robertson ·
I bought a used laptop on Ebay, which was so clogged with hair that I was surprised the fan could turn at all.

When I wrote back to the seller to tell him that it had arrived in working order, I asked how his white dog was doing. He was surprised that I knew, until he saw the photograph of the felt pad that had built up on the cooling fins.

I am very thankful for the various sites over the years which have published disassembly instructions for laptops.
jdixon ·
> I am very thankful for the various sites over the years which have published disassembly instructions for laptops over the years.

One of the things I like about Dell is that this type of information has always been available on their website. It's not always easy to find, but it's there.
CFWhitman ·
jdixon wrote:One of the things I like about Dell is that this type of information has always been available on their website. It's not always easy to find, but it's there.


Service manuals are always available for HP laptops as well, or at least for their business class ones (I haven't dealt much with consumer aimed ones, so their service manuals may or may not be available -- I don't know).
Bob_Robertson ·
You should-a aught-a seen what I had to do to get the service manual for my Sony VAIO laptop. Sony didn't even want to admit that such paperwork even existed.
jdixon ·
> Service manuals are always available for HP laptops as well...

I've been able to find the information needed on most HP laptops, but not all. That may merely be a failure on my part.

However, IMO, their writeups are nowhere near as good as Dell's.

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