I have a pretty decent laptop....from a technical perspective that is. It is a 2GHz, 1GB, 80GB system with a 265MB ATI X700 graphics card and a BEAUTIFUL 15" wide screen. Really great for graphic intensive apps. Oh yeah, and it's CRAZY ASS HOT! Hot as in "It will burn your legs" hot. I couldn't figure out how a manufacturer would spec a system like this and not provide the proper cooling for this. It had gotten so bad that I had to get one of those cooling fan plates to sit the laptop on just to keep it cool. After months of using that stupid thing I decided that I needed to check the system out to see it there was a real problem with it.

Opened it up and started poking around. checked out the fans, seemed to be working. But something about the heatsink assembly didn't look "right" to me. Moved cables around, pulled tape, unscrewed the plates and removed the assembly.....

The manufacturer never took the foil off of the thermal pads on the heatsink for the processor and the graphics card.....

How unbelievably stupid is this?!? I am amazed that the damn thing hasn't caught fire yet! Scraped the plates, alcohol wash, buffing, new thermal paste and now I have a workign system that won't burn the hair off of my legs.

Look, I understand the things that go wrong in fabrication facilities but come on! This was one for the books