palm rest warm - return deadline approaching

Hi, I just bought a used Dell Latitude D600 (Square Trade warranty available).

I'm finding that the palm rest gets very warm.

The seller is advising that I should buy a cooling pad, and also disconnect the AC adapter (he says it gets hotter when run on full charge.

The reason I bought it was because I specifically wanted a lower ghz laptop, yet with a 14" or 15" screen & DVD drive.
(The reason for this would be off-topic.)

Other than the warm palm rest, it seems OK, but I'm worried of heat-caused HDD failure, which hassle I definitely don't want.
And which is why I'm considering returning it.

Besides, I don't think a cooling pad is a good substitute for a built-in fan, not to mention that there's only 2 USB ports, one of which is dedicated to USB/PS2 adapter, and the other to USB hub from which a cable runs to printer.

Would it make sense to return it? (Not sure the seller would pay return ship charges.

 

Do you get SMART warnings from the drive? I find it worrisome as I have had plenty of failing drives give off alot of heat.

 

What're the actual temps on the hard drive?

We used to have a fleet of D600s and they're pretty much all like this, largely because there's all of one millimeter of plastic between your hand and the HDD. With early 5400rpm drives, you can really feel the heat.

I doubt it's a problem if the drive temp isn't actually that high; fwiw, we never had a heat-related drive failure on our D600s.

 

1. I wonder if the whole system is getting warm. See the Undervolting Guide for reducing the CPU voltage and temperature without reducing performance.

2. If the HDD is original then it will be from a generation that uses significantly more power than the current HDDs (check what model which you are checking the temperature). Replacing with a newer HDD should reduce the temperature (but check the interface type).

John

 

Thanks so much everyone!

Firstly, re: the undervolting guide - that's quite a learning curve, but thanks for the link. I hope to print it soon (since i'm on Chrome now, there's no easy way to print preview etc.) Regarding buying/installing new HDD, since I don't have experience with that, nor installation of an entire XP system, I'd find it less threatening to just return this, and try finding yet another low ghz system. Within the past few months I've already bought 3 laptops which were no good for me. One I still have. Another I returned within 7 days, and now this, which I may soon return.

Tsunade & Commander Wolf:

After your Q's I googled, then downloaded Active SMART. It will only be for 30 days, of course, then I suppose it will automatically uninstall?

Results:

(1) Every minute, this popup pops up via sys-tray:
..... "Power status change detected. Enabled power saving mode."

(2) Performance & reliability of the HD is LOW.

(3) Disk health is LOW (reallocated bad blocks 193

(4) Performance LOW

Temperature 32 degrees C
...but this is not acid test, I should wait until it's at full charge, then report back. It's now running on battery.
...OK, I just now connected to AC. Bear with me while I wait for it to heat up to max heat, then view temp. again.

Total free space 87%

 

193 reallocated bad blocks is very bad. Even if you don't return the notebook, you really should get that hard drive replaced.

 

Thanks, if I'd need to return it in order not to have grief with performance, I think it pays to return it.

btw, here's an update:
The battery is still charging (it states 98% remaining).
And the temp. reading now reads 40 degrees

OK, at full charge it's seeming to hold steady at 40 degree temp.
UPDATE (about 1 hr. later) - it's up to 43 degrees

What to do?
Note that with S&H it cost me approx. $195.
Does it pay to go thru hassle of installing HDD & fresh XP install?
Should I ask seller if he'd agree to do it for me if I ship it back?
At what cost (for either option)?

If not for HDD issue, I'm sorta happy with this laptop (at least thus far.

 

For less than half the price of that shipping and handling, you could easily go to a place like Best Buy or Fry's, or some other local electronics store and buy a replacement hard drive and have them install it. They may even be willing to do a fresh XP install for you as well, although I am less certain of that. The point being that a new hard drive will probably run you between $50-$80 dollars, depending on capacity, and I can't really see them charging more than maybe $20 for installation and possibly cloning your system over.

The temperatures you're seeing are relatively normal, maybe a tad high. Usually most hard drives I see run between about 35 degrees Celsius to 40 degrees Celsius, and are generally rated for up to about 55 or 60 degrees Celsius, so you still have some margin temperature-wise. The reallocated bad blocks are a much bigger worry, as those are areas of the disk that are damaged and can no longer be written to or read from (which is why they're bad), and so any data that was there has been moved and assigned (reallocated) to new sections of your hard drive. A few, maybe up to a dozen or so are not usually a worry, depending on how old your drive is (a new drive shouldn't have any, but wear and tear over time will make that count rise), but 193 is a lot.

 

If you are otherwise happy with the machine then I would replace the HDD. It looks like it has clocked up a lot of hours (power on hours are included in the SMART data) and, like people, the older they are then the more likely they are to die. And, if/when, you replace the computer then you can remove your HDD and use it for backup storage.

John

 

Thanks again so much guys for all your advice! It was very helpful and educational.

When I said i'm "sorta happy" I meant that, for example there's occasional "scraping" "crackly" noise, something like how carpenter ants sound, during occasional CPU activity. That's no matter if speaker volume is high or low. Whereas to my knowledge, which may be inaccurate, not all laptop speakers make that specific pitch of crackling (at least not the way my ears perceive it.

Granted, it's minor for most people, but I hear/see/smell/taste differently.

So between that, and the HDD (and perhaps others I've not yet become aware of) I'm opting for returning it, for budgeting reasons. If not for the HDD, this would have definitely been a good buy, though.