Since the Powerbook is notoriously a hot-running machine, I thought I’d try out The Lapintor, the painfully-named laptop heat shield made from foam and Thinsulate, designed to not only keep your legs from getting too warm when using your machine, but keep the machine running cooler overall, as well. At $25, it really wouldn’t have to work that well to be worth it—just keep laps cool. And it does that as well as advertised, plus the material doesn’t make bare legs sweaty just by itself (rawr!).
I had another motive, though, which is that my one whisper-quiet Powerbook now likes to keep its fan running most of the time since I’ve hooked up an external, secondary monitor, so I was hoping that by propping it on the two little nubs in the back (optional, if you don’t like them) it would drop the temperature enough to knock it back into fanless mode. That was hoping too much, I’m afraid. While I didn’t benchmark it, just a half-inch of air underneath didn’t make enough of a difference to keep the fan off. If the top of the Lapinator was made of metal, it would perhaps work as a giant heat sink. Instead, the hard plastic probably doesn’t make the heat any worse, but I don’t think it’s helping much either.
Still, it’s sturdy enough to bang around and throw in a bag, and it definitely makes the use of a hot laptop a less sweaty experience. I give it two ringing bells and three illustrated Starsky and Hutch slash fiction stories, which is pretty high praise, really.
Product Page [Lapinator]
