New Linux install grinds to halt [confirmed over-heating problem]

[Eugene]

Personally i wish laptop manufacturers would rethink the design of their products.

They do, Dell's product line is called Latitude. The Inspiron and the 1500 series are known hot running. They are bottom of the line, designed to be used by grandma for 30 minutes a day. The Latitude line have a much better thermal design.

 

[davoid]

They do, Dell's product line is called Latitude. The Inspiron and the 1500 series are known hot running. They are bottom of the line, designed to be used by grandma for 30 minutes a day. The Latitude line have a much better thermal design.

I can't believe any computer is designed to be used for only 30 minutes a day. You cannot design a machine to be hot running, assuming that the user isn't going to use it very much. Where would anyone find a demographic that buys a computer and then hardly uses it? If there is such a demographic it would be a very small fraction of buyers I imagine.

I wouldn't call my Studio 1558 bottom of the line. It cost me roughly

 

[Eugene]

I'm not saying its designed for 30 minutes of use, I'm saying thats the target user.
I spent a few years as the tech support for salesdroids. Each manufacturer has different target markets and though they each call them different names they are all similar. You have the basic home user who works all day then powers their pc on for a little bit to check heir e-mail and facebook. The lower end are targeted at those users and are not designed or tested to be run 24x7. The Latitude line is targeted at the business user who runs their laptop many hours and needs the better thermal cooling.
I never did agree with the big makers choice to use the lower end for the SOHO market be it an inspiron, presario, pavilion, etc. The small office is larger impacted by a desktop.laptop being down than the enterprise market yet those lower end systems are all sold in the office supply stores and those users demanded onsite service and such when their only payroll machine is down. I always tried to steer my SOHO customers toward the latitude/Aramda/Evo enterprise lines for the onsite warranties so that if they did have a problem there was no arguing over me coming to them or them bringing it to me to service.

Anyway the point is those lower end are not thermally tested as much as the business models as the market for them is the user who doesn't really need a laptop (most spend their lives on a desk and never get carried around). You'll find the hinges on those laptops don't last as well as the business models either.

As far as cost, you'll find the business grade models are about the same price because they usually don't have as good as sound/video or all the extra software bundled with them.

Unless your a gamer I always suggest the business models are they are designed to run longer. its similar t buying the right tool for the job, for example an Accura/Lexus/etc can cost as much as a simple box truck but the box truck is designed to haul cargo rather than have a good stereo and leather seats and the box truck will last longer being used to do work every day/

 

[Joelgp83]

At UEI college, we used Dell Optiplex 760s. I assume it was the standard business model of a few years ago. The were ok, but their associated monitors were literally crash prone.

You'd have a system go to sleep, but upon waking up, the tower would wake, but the monitor would sometimes go unresponsive, indicating that the main processor in the LCD crashed. Only thing that would get it working would be unplugging it and letting the capacitors drain. :banghead:

 

[Eugene]

Yes, Optiplex was the business model. HP had the Vectra and Compaq the Deskpro (I can't recall the post merger name is).

Even the business models can suffer from dirt the difference is the cpu and heatsink/fan/heat pipes usually are well away from anything else. You onlt have a finite amount of space in a laptop and the home models have more space dedicated to sound and video chips/boards and speakers so other components have to be closer together.

When I still did desktop support it was still pretty common to disable any power saving due to the amount of problems it caused like the monitor example above