HOT!!! Apple Mac Powerbook G4
 

Hi everyone,

hope all are doing fine, would it be possible to get some advice regarding my Apple powerbook 15inch 1.67ghz 512ram which i have had for around 5 months. I'm not sure if this is common with laptops but as i tend to use many for long number of hours 10-14 hours a day but sometimes less, it gets extremly hot from underneath, not te whole laptop but more towards the upper half of the bottom, not the half where the battery is?

I was just wondering is this normal or should i get this checked out, also is there a normal temperture it should stay at and should i be using it for such long periods of time? {i dont literally mean 12-14 hours but that how long its on for, sometimes i just clost the laptop and leave it in sleep mode}

Any help would be appreciated

Best Regards

Issy

Mine gets hot too. Mainly if it is on my lap. On the table it is a tad cooler.

But yeah...hot....

The title of your post made it sound like you're fencing stolen goods instead instead of inquiring about temperature. lol

Yes, the powerbooks run really hot. I have one of the first generation 15" aluminum G4's and it's often unpleasant to use on my lap. Before that I had a Titanium powerbook and it was also really hot. They never came up with a G4 that ran very cool, and couldn't even get close to a usable system with a G5. That's probably the main motivation for Apple switching to Intel.

they had a battery recall on the 15 inch model because of it running too hot. you should check the website and see if yours qualifies.

Thanks for the reply, my battery is not listed, so that seems ok, and from what fellow dvinfo users suggest is its normal.

Once again thanks for the help :>

Yeah....they get hot....really hot. If you actually computed with this puppy in your lap, and you were wearing a pair of shorts or something, that allowed for contact of the underside of the Powerbook to bare skin, you would soon be regretting it (unless you were sitting in the snow and using the Mac as heat source...in which case wearing shorts is equally unadvisable).

I tend to use one of those coolpad riser things under my laptop to increase the amount of allowable airflow under the unit...I think it helps a little in keeping the Mac slightly cooler.
-Jon

Air Flow
 

I have built many computers (though not laptops) from scratch and a primary concern is always air flow. Small and thin laptops (like the Powerbooks) are not going to have the same sort of air flow necessary to real run cool. Also, running the needed fans takes up more juice which eats into the run times. It is always a trade off. My system (Alienware laptop) runs hot even with 4 fans.... but that is because it has RAID hard drives and a P4HT (the biggest problem is the CPU).

The best way to keep them cool is give them air flow. I tilt my laptop and have an external fan blowing onto the bottom of the system so the internal fans don't have to work as hard. My system gets about 10-14 hours of use a day (Vegas Render machine) so my usage is far above what can be expected for a laptop. It still gets hot (especially right over the hard drives) so I try to keep the ambient air temp in my office below 70F.

jason

G4 Temp Fix
 

I also have a g4 that was overheating. Apple support said to uninstall virux - which they have discontinued since it causes the powerbook to run hot. I did it -- and its now just about as cold as ice. I also have a "sticky" pad underneath to help with airflow. Link below was provided by apple.
http://www.info.apple.com/kbnum/n301291

Hi,

thanks for the response. i dont have virex, does that mean there might be something wrong with my machine? from the previous posts i take that as a no?

Warm they are...
 

All the G4 laptops run hot. Price of doing business.

Warm they are...
 

All the G4 laptops run hot. Price of doing business.