The fan that screams and the machine that burns

It is two o'clock in the afternoon. The room is warm, the ceiling fan is turning slowly overhead, and you are typing a letter with the laptop resting directly on your lap. Suddenly, the little fan inside the machine begins to whistle and roar like an old generator running low on oil. The plastic under your left hand turns so hot you can barely rest your palm on it. The mouse pointer on the screen starts jerking and hesitating, freezing for two seconds each time you click. Ten minutes later, without asking your permission, the whole machine abruptly shuts down with a dry click, and the room goes dead silent.

People look at a hot, slow computer and shake their heads: 'This machine is old; its strength is finished.' But computer chips do not have muscles that get tired with age. A chip made ten years ago can calculate numbers just as fast today as it did when it came out of the factory box. What actually happens is much simpler and much more human: the computer is choking. It is trying to run a marathon while someone holds a heavy wool blanket pressed tight against its mouth and nose.

The grey carpet and the mattress trap

Here is what lives inside. The brain of your computer is smaller than a postage stamp, but when it thinks, it gets as hot as a small electric iron. To keep from burning itself up, a flat copper pipe carries that heat to a little metal grill at the side of the casing. A tiny spinning fan sucks cool air from the holes underneath the laptop and blows it out through those metal teeth. But in Nigeria, air is never empty: it carries red road dust from the harmattan, powder from the room, and lint from clothes. Over six or eight months, that dust catches on the inside of the metal grill like hair caught in a bathroom drain, weaving itself into a thick, solid grey carpet of felt.

Now picture the fan: it is spinning at top speed, screaming in desperation, trying to push air through a solid wall of dust. The hot air cannot get out. The temperature inside climbs past ninety degrees. When the computer's internal thermometer feels that dangerous heat, it pulls the emergency brake: it cuts its own working speed in half to save itself from melting. That is why your typing stutters. The laptop is not weak; it is gasping for breath.

The biggest mistake people make is using a laptop on a bed, a foam mattress, or a soft velvet sofa pillow. Foam is an oven: it sinks under the weight of the laptop, seals the intake holes on the belly completely shut, and traps all the heat inside. Always place the laptop on a hard, flat surface — a wooden desk, a dining table, or even a smooth plastic serving tray. If you want a free upgrade that cools your machine instantly: take two ordinary plastic bottle caps from water bottles and slide them under the two rear rubber feet of the laptop. Lifting the back of the machine by just one centimetre lets cool room air flow freely underneath the belly. The fan immediately quiets down, the heat drops, and your mouse stops freezing.

• Never place a running laptop on a foam mattress, pillow, or thick blanket: soft foam suffocates the cooling vents in three minutes.
• The bottle cap trick: put two plastic bottle tops under the rear feet to lift the belly and let cool air rush in underneath.
• If the fan screams even when you are doing nothing, the metal grill inside is clogged with dust and needs a simple brush cleaning.
• Never blow air violently into a fan with a high-pressure pump: spinning the fan too fast while the machine is off can generate electricity backwards.

Cool air is free speed

Before you spend money buying a newer laptop or paying someone to 'format' your drive, give the machine room to breathe. Clean the dust from the grill, lift the belly off the table, and keep it off the mattress. A cool computer is a quiet, obedient servant that will work beside you for years without shouting. Next: the frightening tick-tick-click sound inside the palm rest, and the solid-state cure.