“Laptop Legs”

One of the things that concerns me as a support guy is the tendency of laptops to overheat when operating “flat” on the tabletop.  I have one, admittedly several years old, that will shut itself down after about a half hour of operating like that.

My previous solution has been to use whatever’s handy to prop up the back of the laptop so that it gets some decent airflow.  Unfortunately, that “whatever’s handy” item isn’t always handy.

In glancing through the Cyberguys catalog some time ago, I ran across an interesting item: “Laptop Legs:”

I’ve been using them on my main laptop for several years, and I’m satisfied enough with their value vs. price (US$11.49) to take the time to write this up.  (And no, I have no connection with Cyberguys beyond being a long-time and very satisfied customer.)

I just ordered three more sets to fix up my wife’s netbook and a couple of laptops that I’m setting up.  The packages look like this:

They have adhesive backing, and they can be removed, at least according to the instructions, although they also caution that it may leave some adhesive residue behind.  So I would (1) plan carefully where you plan to put them on the laptop, and (2) plan on not removing them.

When they’re on, they look something like this (on my wife’s netbook, an Acer Aspire One):

Once installed you have two legs that can be folded out.  The smaller one is 1”, the larger is 1-3/8”.  The smaller one also has the rubber padding on it, so that if you do need to leave it flat, it has less of a tendency to slip around.

Folded out, they look like this (on an old Dell Inspiron 1100 I’m planning to reuse):

In this case, I’m using the longer legs to prop this laptop up.  As you can see, with the legs folded out there’s plenty of room for airflow through the fan opening on the bottom of the computer, into the system and out through the vents in the center and the viewer’s far left of this laptop.  Using the SpeedFan utility, which I use to monitor the temperature of the CPU, I notice a significant improvement between not using the legs and having them folded out.

BTW, I took the photo with the laptop on a rug just to provide some contrast to make it easier to see the legs, but I don’t normally use it that way. :)

The Laptop Legs are manufactured by LapWorks of Cucamonga, California.  Details on this specific product can be found on their website here, including a video demonstrating the installation procedure.

Again, I have no connection whatsoever with either Cyberguys.com or LapWorks, other than simply being a customer.

Thanks for reading!

-- //Steve//

Social Networking at the Silverwood house:

My wife has – at my prompting – taken the “giant leap” into the world of social networking.  I’ve got her set up now on Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn!  She’s not a blogger yet, but give me some time to work on her…

-- //Steve//

Beautiful Wildomar…!

We sure do have the prettiest sunrises and sunsets here in Wildomar, California.  This one showed up on the weather page at SWRNN.com (SouthWest Riverside News Network):

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Virga over Wildomar: Cone clouds of water vapor reach for the earth. Photo courtesy of John Garrett.

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As of right this minute, it’s here, just in case you want to see it for yourself.  (Corydon and Union is the street location from which the photo was taken.)

We are also extremely grateful for the rain this season.  Our total accumulation in Wildomar this season is just over 11 inches.  I know many areas have suffered enormous damage from the rain, and we’ve had our share of road problems and mudslides, but despite all that it’s still a welcome relief from the long drought and the high water rates we’ve had to pay over the past few years.

Allan’s truck out front of our house, getting an undercarriage wash…

Neighbors next door could have done some “brownwater” rafting…!

Across the street, more of the same.  At one point, the water runoff from up the hill was enough to completely fill the street from curb to curb. (Uphill is to the right of these pictures.)

//Steve//

 

Forthcoming review of Stickies 7.0b software

A while back, I talked with Tom Revell of Zhorn Software regarding a comparative review of his Stickies program.  The object was to compare Stickies against the Sticky Notes program that comes with Windows 7, and the Quick Notes capabilities of OneNote 2007.

(Yes, I hyperlinked the heck out of the above paragraph.  Call me crazy, but I thought it was a good idea to provide the links for your convenience…!  Hey, nobody’s holding a gun to your head to make you click on any of them, right?)

Unfortunately, that was back in October, and a few things have happened between then and now.  But it’s really going to get written and as soon as I get it done it’ll be right here.  Honest!

//Steve//

 

“CD Required” – how to get around it on a netbook….

OK, just suppose: you have this great game you’ve been using for years on your desktop or laptop system, but it requires that the CD be in the drive in order for the game to work.  Up to now, that’s not been a problem, but you just got this cool new netbook and you want to play the game on the road.  Only problem is, netbooks don’t have an optical drive.  (Real-world solution for me was a Scrabble program from Hasbro for my wife to use on her netbook on the long commute to and from work.) So what to do…?

Depending on the CD, there’s a possible solution to be had in a product called PowerISO. 

One of the components in this tool is the Virtual Drive Manager.  If you create an ISO image of the CD and keep that on your hard drive (I put mine in the “C:\users\steve\ISO Images” folder), you can use the Virtual Drive Manager to “mount” the ISO file as a drive letter.  To the computer, it looks just like a physical CD drive.

(Further instructions on how to use PowerISO and the Virtual Drive Manager can be found in the tutorials section of the PowerISO web site.)

Recommended: first create the .ISO file, mount it as a drive letter, then do the installation from that drive letter.  Some programs will look for the CD on the same drive letter as that from which they were installed.

Also note: some DVDs will let you do this as well, so you can play the movie from the .ISO image without having an optical drive on your system.  So you can watch some movies “on the go” on your netbook.

//Steve//

PS: In no way should the above instructions be construed as advocating any form of illegal copying of software, movies or other intellectual property.  I am a firm believer, however, that making a copy of your legitimately-owned or –licensed media for the purposes of backing up or other reasonable use is, or should be, part of the terms of your license to use said media.  Basically, this means you can do pretty much what you want with it for your own use, or to facilitate your using it, but not for distribution to others.

PowerISO: http://www.poweriso.com

Swag from CRI

The postman showed up this week with an envelope from China Radio International (as in mainland China).  They included their usual shortwave broadcast info and programming schedule, but also a couple of special items:

1. A postcard commemorating “The Award Ceremony of ‘The 60th Anniversary of the People’s Republic of China’ Global Knowledge Contest”
   
   
   …and…
   
2. A ‘Happy New Year” greeting card:
   
   

Not the most spectacular stuff in the world, but certainly a very pleasant surprise to find the mailman delivering to me!

Thanks, CRI!

//Steve//

Prayer may be needed….

 

I’m about to take a major plunge. 

Presently I’m running 32-bit Windows 7 on my somewhat older but still adequate Dell XPS M1210 laptop, with 4Gb of memory and a decent CPU and graphics processor.  So far it seems to work nicely, but I’m wondering if the 64-bit version might work a little better. 

Tomorrow’s big experiment: swap hard drives for a little 180-Gb drive (to keep my original data safe on the big 500Gb drive presently installed!) and see how well everything loads up and boots. 

Last time I tried this, it slowed everything to a crawl immediately after installing Office 2007, but that may have just an an oversight somewhere that’s been fixed by now. 

Will let everyone know what happens when I do it.  I’d also like to hear of any problem reports, comments or other matters regarding using this utility in Outlook, as transferring the image contents from other sources. 

Good or bad, I’d love to hear from you!

//Steve//