Laptops with easy heat sink service?
- by Niten
Can you recommend a current laptop model with easy heat sink access – or better yet, a removable air intake filter – making it easy to periodically clean out the dust and lint that always packs up in these things?
Every laptop I've owned has eventually overheated on account of a clogged heat sink. (I suppose it doesn't help that I have a cat who loves to hang out where I'm working, or that my laptop is almost always running.) One of the things I really love about my current system, a Dell Inspiron 1420n, is how easy it is to service its cooling system: whenever I notice the fan starting to work harder and the CPU temperature climbing higher than it should be, I merely have to unscrew a single panel from the bottom of the machine, clean out the heat sink, and then I'm good for another few months.
Which current models of the "business laptop" variety offer similar easy cooling system service? I'm looking for something roughly along the lines of:
14- or 15-inch display
Nehalem-based CPU
Solid construction – magnesium chassis or better (like the Inspiron)
TPM (for BitLocker) ideal, but not mandatory
Docking adapter ideal, but not mandatory
Good battery life
For example, the ThinkPad T410 would have been my top choice, but it seems like it would be a serious chore to service its heat sink. For the current MacBook Pros it looks downright impossible. No matter how nice the laptop is in other respects, it'll be of no use to me when it's overheating. So, any suggestions? Thanks in advance...
(I'm constantly surprised that customers and manufacturers don't pay more attention to this feature, at least in the business laptop subcategory. In the last couple months I've fixed two friends' laptops which were also overheating due to clogged cooling systems; clearly I'm not the only one affected by this.)
