T500 Fan Noise?

Does the T500 make much noise when idle? I have a Dell E6500 and once the fan starts going, it might quiet down but it never gets totally silent. I'll be sitting in my room with no other noise and I can hear it pretty clearly--and it's annoying! So I'm curious what the sound levels of the T500 are...

 

Nope. While idling, web browsing, word processing, etc, my fan stays off. When idling on discrete graphics mode, the fan stays at low speed, which is quieter than my hard drive. Only when gaming does the fan rev up, but overall, the fan is still much quieter than any other laptop's fan (in my experience).

 

T500 is extremely quit. I have owned several different Dell laptops over the years and the Dells have all been very loud. You will be happy with the T500.

 

There's really not a quieter laptop out there that has a mechanical fan. The mbp is very quiet, but when the fan turns on, I think the T500 has the edge.

 

Thanks for the responses all, I appreciate it. I think another testament to the T series being quiet is the fact that when I search "fan" I can hardly find any threads complaining about the noise. On the other hand, searching "fan" on the Latitude board I find tons of threads .

A funny little note... the quietest laptop I've ever heard is my brother's bottom-of-the-barrel Compaq C776NR that retailed for $500.

 

Yup, in both win7 and vista its near silence web browsing using ati card. I have to put my ear right up to the palmrest to hear anything (think it is the hard drive)
the dvd rw can be pretty loud, although it is more of a whooshing sound so it isn't too annoying.
im sure netbooks with flash storage are really quiet too. often there is a tradeoff between adequate cooling and quietness. My friend's macbook pro (not unibody) is really quiet but gets really hot under load.

 

I have a T500 and when I'm web browsing I can't hear the fan. If I walk away and leave my computer on and then I return and can't remember if I left it on or off I actually have to look at the LED's. It makes NO noise at all especially with an SSD.

 

I never notice the fan on mine. The most noise probably comes from my hard drive, which is occasionally noticeable.