Dan asks, “I am noticing that my laptop gets really hot and sometimes turns off. What can I do to prevent this?” Dan, your problem sounds like it’s heat related. Fixing your problem may be as simple as blowing out the heat sink and changing some of your habits.
Typically, a laptop draws air from the bottom and exhausts either through the side or back of the machine. You’ll need to find where your particular model exhausts the air; and using a can of compressed air, blow into the exhaust vent. With any luck you will see a ‘puff’ of dust blow out the bottom of the computer through the fan inlet. Usually, I blow into the exhaust, then blow into the fan and repeat both steps a few times until all the dust seems to be gone.
Once you blow all the dust from the machine you should notice a steady stream of warm air from the exhaust vent when the machine is running. If you don’t feel warm air flowing from the vent, you may need a new fan. Occasionally the fan will run intermittently so you may not feel the air flow until the laptop warms up.
Dust buildup and overheating tends to happen when the laptop is placed on carpets, couches and beds when it is powered on. Houses that heat with forced hot air or wood put more dust in the air and will cause a faster buildup of dust. There are a couple makes which are more prone to overheating than others. I wouldn’t spend any money on heating pads as they don’t seem to do anything.
Ron asks, “If MP3 music downloads are free does it mean they’re legal?” Well Ron, I’m not a legal expert, but I have to say that MP3’s which are downloaded for free are probably not legal. Peer-to-peer (P2P) software companies like eMule, LimeWire and FrostWire that advertise “free music downloads,” are really advertising “free downloads of illegally copied music.”
MP3 compression is a common method making music CDs portable. In other words, if you purchase a CD and want to put the music onto your iPod or MP3 player, you would need to convert the music tracks on the CD into MP3’s. This process is called “ripping.” This in itself is perfectly legal provided you own the CD. It is also legal to purchase the MP3’s from legitimate music download sights like iTunes.
P2P sharing itself is not illegal and many companies use P2P technology to distribute large files which would otherwise consume large amounts of bandwidth. P2P works by networking a large number of users together who all share the same files. In practice, many users may have the same file on their computer. When you start downloading that file you are pulling smaller pieces from each user which saves upload bandwidth and increases download speed.
A couple decent alternatives to P2P applications include websites like www.pandora.com and www.playlist.com. Both websites allow visitors to play songs from the websites’ databases. At this point, both are allowed and seem to be legal. Neither website allows users to download songs. It seems the only true way to own an MP3 is by purchasing the CD or by purchasing the title from sites like iTunes.
Tech Tip of the week: Macrium Reflect Free is a great program for backing up your PC. I suggest people backup their system weekly. Once an external drive is plugged in, it’s as simple as following the onscreen directions.
(Jeromy Patriquin is the President of Laptop & Computer Repair, Inc. located at 509 Main St. in Gardner. You can e-mail him at Jeromy@LocalComputerWiz.com or call him directly at (978) 919-8059.)