Reply #2, John....

Funny how things work out.

I can't get the I8Kfan to run properly on the machine - the mouse or the touchpad both refuse to operate anywhere near properly with it running. My machine does appear in the list on the site for the download.

BUT your comments and the site's comments have led me to the entirely reverse direction. I will now keep a copy of Word running simply to ensure that the fan IS doing some work. That's gotta be better than no fan.

Also, I can't say that I've ever heard the fan on 'high' and maybe now I will.

Thanks again.


>Jim
>
>Several Dell notebooks have a notorious bug in their fan handling. If yours is one of the affected Dells, I suspect that Word must be doing some invisible processing when it is visible, causing the processor to heat up and the fan to start.
>
>Check out the i8kfan product (it was at http://www.diefer.de/i8kfan/index.html but that url seems to fail. Try looking up i8kfan on Google) and if your machine is one of the affected ones, install i8kfan. Prepare to be amazed- Dell's fan control leaves your processor and hard drive far, far hotter than recommended by the manufacturers; my notebook sounds like a jumbo jet when I do intensive processing and both fans go to high speed. Dell's own fan control never exceeded slow speed.
>
>Regards
>
>JR