4 questions about notebooks

[Lightingbird]

A few questions that I have been trying to determine for some time.

1. What is the best way to get the dust out of a laptop? Mainly acer ones, they are usually the name brand we use.

2. Can excessive dust in a laptop really slow down program performance that much?

3. At my home, I'm paying for a 20MB download connection. If I have a laptop hooked up to my linksys wireless router and it’s the only computer on. Should I get the full 20MB or will I get about 80% of that since I'm going through a router?

4. Would it be better to just use an ethernet cable or wireless for overall speed reliability?

 

[SNGX1275]

1. I wouldn't worry about it, if you can't get to it with canned air, then it likely isn't a big issue.

2. Only if its preventing the CPU from maintaining a normal temperature, if it gets too high the CPU will throttle down.

3. The router won't slow up your connection, it is likely 100 or 1000Mbps, so a max out on your dl of 20 is well within its capabilities. If you see 80% it is your ISP and or the servers you are connecting to.

4. Wired, but even 802.11g is over twice as fast as your 20Mbps down, so in theory it wouldn't make any difference. But I've always felt like things are quicker wired even if they shouldn't be.

 

[DelJo63]

4. Wired, but even 802.11g is over twice as fast as your 20Mbps down, so in theory it wouldn't make any difference. But I've always felt like things are quicker wired even if they shouldn't be.

Remember the 'weakest link'? Our personal LAN's can not perform any faster that the link from the ISP to our slowest device in the chain.
Most NICs are now 10/100 and factoring in the 70% efficiency of Ethernet, a wired
network would max out at 70mbs. No wireless todate can match that, even the still non-standard 11n devices.