i have a latitude as well and have noticed the same, the fan does not kick in full blast but does come on. i always thought that it was the extra pressure of norton scanning and word trying to run, also it is extremely rare that i don't also have vfp8, 2.6, and windows explorer open at the same time! it sounds like you have not been having the best time with office lately!
Cheers
~M

>UPDATE: I can report that the following does NOT happen under Word97. I cannot say regarding Word XP or Word 2003 because neither is installed on the laptop. I can also say that the Word 2000 on the machine is right up-to-date as regards Office fixes.
>
>I've noticed something weird about Word 2000 when it is running on my notebook (a DELL Latitude C800 with 384MB RAM and 2 batteries installed but running on transformer when I noticed this).
>
>Whenever I bring up any document in Word 2000, or even start a new document, the machine's fan will start within a few seconds. The fan will only stop, after about 30 seconds or so, AFTER I MINIMIZE the word document! If I leave the Word instance 'up' and go to, say, VFP (IDE) then even though the document is no longer visible (I run VFP full screen) the fan continues to run!!!
>
>No big deal I guess, but it does seem that something in Word is keeping the CPU busy and that there is no apparent usefulness behind whatever activity that is.
>
>cheers