you should either disconnect the cable, or use software to kill the fan (google) - by the sounds of it your fan motor is still going, which will kill the motor, and still use power and make heat. its trivial to disconnect or use software.

posting this on my eeepc, love it

Just figured I'd add my $0.02. Recently got a good deal on a 4G Surf (as mentioned earlier in this thread I had a 2G Surf preordered, but decided to cancel and wait a bit after they went up to $300).

Figured I'd make some comments on running the EEE fanless. Looking at how the EEE cooling system is set up, it seems to me that it was originally designed to run without a fan. How it's set up is the CPU/NB/SB are on the top of the motherboard and sit flush against a large aluminum heat-spreader below the keyboard. The CPU fan of the unit is below the motherboard, i.e. on the opposite side of the major heat-producing chips. It seems to me that the fan is an afterthought, as this is a pretty silly design for an active cooling system. With it being on the opposite side of the CPU/NB/SB, it really doesn't do much to aid cooling (just picks up heat off the chips that is transferred to the motherboard PCB). Obviously a majority of the heat is transferred through the metal heat-spreader butted up against the CPU and chipset.

Point being, CPU fan seems to be pretty useless and unnecessary. Running the fan at 100% using eeectl in WinXP doesn't seem to reduce temps much vs. not running the fan at all, maybe 5-10*C. However, because all the heat is being transferred upwards through the heat-spreader, this can cause the keyboard and palmrest area to get kind of hot if you don't have the fan running to aid cooling by pulling heat off the back of the board. It's not a huge difference, though, even with the fan at 100% the keyboard seems to get a bit warm.

As far as power consumption, idle is about 15w and load 19w (measured with Kill-a-Watt).

I am writing this from an eee 900, I was quite impressed with this little laptop until I took it home where it is much quiter than work.

I can hear a distinct electrical buzzing from the laptop constantly, even when not being stressed (idle), then the fan kicked in

This is a fantastic bit of kit for those who want/need an ultra-portable that does not cost a fortune, but this is not as quiet as I was expecting, although not hearing any HDD spin or seek noise is nice.


Andy

Update.

The high pitched whine is directly related to the brightness of the screen when on, and when it is being charged/plugged into the mains.

I am glad that this laptop is not for my own use, as I am very sensitive to high pitched noises, and would not be able to put up with it.


Andy