An Ex insiders view (Score 2)

I use to work at Dell in the portable section as a senior tech and one of the hardest things we had to overcome was explained to the customer that these ARE NOT laptops. These are portable computers. With the advent of technology in the last three to four years it has become increasingly difficult for computer manufactures to develop "laptop computers." With the current processor speeds and other advanced requirements that people demand in a portable computer, its difficult to squeez all that power into a tiny compartment. One of the draw backs to that is that these systems put out A LOT of heat. If I recall correctly when Dell started shipping the Inspiron 3200 or 7000 (I think it was the 7000 not sure off the top of my head), they started including a warning letter describing to customers that this was infact not a Laptop and used pretty strong language warning against resting it on bare legs or cunductive materials. Think of it this way take the case off your desktop computer and hold your hand against the heat sink..... of course your not going to do it because you'd burn yourself. Well in a portable computer there is maybe 1/8-1/4 inch separating the outer casing from the processor. So if you run that thing all day and decide to rest it on your legs so you can turn arround and relax theres a good chance your gonna burn yourself. Now instead of putting it on skin say you place it on carpeting. Theres a damn good chance it might catch fire. Anyway thats all I have to say. Although I am glad I dumped all my stock in them.