Chill your Notebook with NHC

Having had all sorts of problems with my Lenovo T42p overheating after the fan blew, even with the fan kept on maximum, I had to find ways to force the temperature down.  Not cool when trying to run a backup causes an abrupt system shutdown!

I found the answer in the really nifty application Notebook Hardware Control.  This application allows you to control the various settings on your notebook associated with power management.  You can assign different profiles for docked and undocked.  Most importantly, you can throttle down the speed your CPU’s running at by controlling the voltage, triggered by different CPU loads.

 

By doing this, you can turn your CPU speed — which you generally don’t need most of, given a modern machine — way down.  I find this useful for keeping my machine cool … but you’ll probably find it useful because by turning the speed down, you can substantially prolong your battery life.  I find that — even with the fan kept on full all the time — I’m adding another 0:30 or so to my battery time.