Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Does the job quite well. But read on before you decide., July 10, 2009
My Sony laptop's fan broke, so it shuts down after 45 mins. At that point, the bottom is VERY hot, almost untouchable. Bought this pad as a part of an HP deal without reading the negative comments here first.
This pad does what it is supposed to do very well. Now I can use my laptop for 5 hours straight. And it's light, easy to fold and carry, just like a small size towel.
Having said that, after 5 hours, the crystals become fully liquid. Then the pad is just slightly better than a normal pad. It takes sometime for the liquid to go back to crystal state - I use my refrigerator to speed up the process.
In summary:
Pros: Light, portable, no external power.
Cons: Cannot use for long hours unless your laptop is not too hot. Otherwise, get something with powered fans.
Takes time for the pad to recover.
Soft, so you still need some flat hard surface when put on your lap.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Not for everyone, but definitely meets my needs!, August 28, 2009
I've gone through a wide range of laptop cooling devices over the years. My biggest beef dwith most of them is that they just weren't adaptable enough to all the environments I use my laptop in. Many were too bulky to travel with, or drained my laptop power on airplane flights, or just weren't comfortable for lap use. This pad definitely gets around all of that -- it is easy to shove in my bag with the laptop, doesn't use any power, and because it's cloth and flexible, is much more comfy on my lap than something rigid and plastic.
And even though I often use my laptop (a macbook air) for 6-8 hours a day, I've had much better luck with it truly helping with cooling than the other reviewers seem to have experienced. When you first start using it, you can feel the crystals in the pad being all stiff and crunchy. As the heat dissipates from the laptop into the pad, the crystals melt, and it starts to feel more like that goo inside ice packs. But, like just about any laptop, mine doesn't leak heat evenly across the surface -- so when one part of the mat has liquefied, others are still crunchy. So after every hour or two of use, I flip the mat around, so that the parts of the mat that are still crunchy crystals are underneath the hottest part of my laptop. Yes, it takes a little doing -- but for me, that is well worth the benefits this pad has for me over the other cooling options I've tried.
The biggest drawback for me -- and the main reason I give it 4 stars instead of 5 -- is that the surface of the pad is relatively slick, and when I sometimes have problems with my laptop slipping around on it. I tried sticking the mat inside a pillowcase and using it that way, and it seems to solve the slippage issue without affecting how well it works by much.
Altogether, this was well worth the money for me -- but I could see how that might not be the case for someone using a heavier, hotter running laptop.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Does the job if you are willing to improvise., July 1, 2009
I got one of these cheap on clearance.
First, I used it by itself on my lap beneath my laptop. Not a good idea. The pad isn't completely stiff, so it buckles some between my legs. Also, while it does absorb heat, some of that heat does slowly seep through the bottom side to your legs.
The solution for me is to use a rigid plastic box about the size of the Targus pad as my foundation, layering on the pad and then the laptop. This has two benefits: one, it allows the pad to do its thing with no worry about seepage; two, the plastic box is thick enough that it raises the laptop keyboard to a much more comfortable level/angle for typing.
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