Is your laptop running slow or occasionally freezing up on you? When is the last time you flipped it over to see if the little cooling fan is still turning? Even if it is spinning, is the bottom hot to the touch? All you might need is a laptop cooling pad, but maybe you're like me and you don't like any of the boring plastic models available and would rather make your own and save a handful of dollars in the process.

I found a piece of scrap plywood in the barn, cut it to size, lined up the cooling fan hole with the location of the laptop fan, secured the new fan which was scraped out of an old desktop computer power supply (Thanks Steve).

Attach the legs, power up your fan and you should notice an increase in the smoothness of operations, and a decrease in the heat coming off the bottom. You might not even need the fan, just the increase in space could make enough difference.