medved

Maybe somebody can help me with this one, I may or may not have any sort of an issue I need to be concerned with. I'm in the process of switching over to laptops and have bought a refurbed IBM R40 to run Ubuntu linux on, and you can find these in barely used condition for around $400 - 500 on Ebay. This one has a 2.2 gh Centrino chip, .5 gb of memory, and a 60 gb hard drive, and appears to be a year or a year and a half old.

The single thing which generates the most heat in this thing is the wifi card, and that seems to be the nature of the beast. Is that something which people have spent any time worrying over? I mean, in theory, you'd like all your computers to operate at room temperature. Is anybody replacing the wifi cards which come in laptops with usb wifi keys which would at least get the heat outside the computer, or is anybody making wifi cards which are notably cooler than the ones being sold a year and a half to three years ago?? Also is there any linux support for any sort of a USB wifi device?

I'd appreciate any thoughts anybody might have.

namelessone

You shouldn't be worried about overheating. It's a non-issue unless you built the laptop yourself (that would impress me) or if you put some new hardware in it.

As for usb wifi adapters, ones with Ralink 2x00 chipsets or Atheros chipsets should work fine.