A few options let you cope with the problem to a degree

11:13 PM CDT on Wednesday, June 28, 2006

By JIM ROSSMAN / The Dallas Morning News

I have a new MacBook Pro, and I can't believe how hot it gets after a few minutes. It's to the point where the laptop is too hot to use on my lap – especially when I am wearing shorts.

Is there anything I can do to make this thing run cooler?

L.W., Plano

Welcome to the world of high-performance laptops. We will be talking about Apple PowerBooks here, but the advice goes for high-powered Windows laptops, too.

I've been using Apple's PowerBooks for years, and every new model seems to run hotter than the one it replaced.

My current laptop is the 1.33 GHz 17-inch PowerBook, and it has always run hot.

In fact, there is a small program you can run called Temperature Monitor that will display the temperature at all your laptop's internal temperature sensors.

I'm running it on my PowerBook as I write this, and four temperatures are showing – battery (96.8 degrees), power supply bottom side (125.2), processor bottom side (134.2) and processor/controller bottom side (127.4).

I've seen readings as high as 160 degrees on iMacs at the office.

There are a few things you can do to keep the temperature down.

First, the laptop works best on a hard surface. Those small rubber feet on the bottom of the laptop are there to let air circulate. Placing the computer on your lap blocks any airflow underneath.

Your first reaction to a hot laptop may be to place a pillow or towel between you and your laptop. That will help your legs feel better, but it will cause your laptop to heat up more.

I do two things on my laptop. I add larger stick-on rubber feet to the bottom to lift it a quarter-inch higher off the desk. I also use a lap desk, which has a beanbag/pillow on the bottom and a hard plastic or wood surface on the top. This keeps my lap happy and my laptop running cooler.

According to Apple, there are two things you can do to the system preferences to keep things a bit cooler.

In the Energy Saver preference pane, click "show details" and click the options tab. Choose "reduced" from the Processor Performance pop-up menu. This setting will cause the laptop to run cooler by limiting the speed of the processor.

You can also click the Sleep tab in the Energy Saver preferences and select the option to "Put the hard drive to sleep when possible." This will cause a bit of a delay when the drive needs to spin back up for access.

I think the lap desk will solve your problems. Brookstone has a nice large lap desk with a built-in light, but the one I use came from Target and is almost exactly the size of my laptop.

Jim Rossman is technical manager for Macintosh support for Belo Corp.

E-mail techhelp@dallasnews.com