Inspir...on.

My Inspiron 1520 has been with me, if I recall correctly, about 3 years now. It's getting to be a bit of a clunker, but it works. Probably the best thing I did to it was downgrade to Windows XP from Windows Vista. From there on, it's been smooth sailing ever since. I never made the jump to Windows 7, and at least on this laptop I'm not gonna.




This morning the cooling fan started spinning on things as simple as Youtube, which I found unusual. I figured that it was worth a look, in any case during those 3 years of travelling with me into all sorts of environments, not once has it been cleaned on the inside. I completely took the thing apart, expecting to find a colony of dust bunnies climbing all over the innards. But the dust situation was surprisingly tame. Sure it was all over the place, but not as bad as I thought. What I did find was that the thermal paste on the CPU had turned into a rubbery, awful mess. So I put in a dab of new thermal paste and reassembled the whole thing. And here I am, hours later, the fan hasn´t made a peep.

I hate how chromed surfaces look under direct flash. Should have probably used a light tent for this one, but that would have meant getting out my D80 and the strobes, and that´s a whole other story for another day.