Leaving a Laptop On

In what sense ?
My guess is as long as it has proper ventilation, as it should anyway, the only thing will be the battery running down, obviously you can use the hibernate etc to minimise any drain on the battery, but if your running it from the mains I have a recollection of something about it's best not to use the battery (unplug it from the laptop) at the same time, now some laptops mains are tied to the battery where you have no option, I can't recall the reason but I remember seeing it a while back, it will probably be wise to close the screen down as well so it isn't active, like you would turn off a monitor, because if no ones there it's pointless not to mention it will prolong it's life that way (not that you may notice), hope this helps a bit anyway.

Well, the reason I ask is because I got high speed at home now, and usually leave it on most of the day and night downloading.

I keep it plugged in.

no, shouldnt hurt anything :wink:...

i leave mine on day/night also..

Laptops run quite warm so i would invest in a cooler for it. If you arent downloading, i dont see the sense in leaving the machine run. The boot up time is in seconds instead of minutes now. There is a wear out factor to be considered.

If you are not downloading things, put the laptop on standby so the CPU is not running at full speed and the hard drive is turned off. It only takes a couple of seconds to resume from standby.

yeah, like 15 sec..

Whats a nice cooler? Links please.

Targus are good: http://search.ebay.com/search/search.dll?from=R40&satitle=chill+pad

These are the best ones IMO.

This one is most effective but uncomfortable on the lap.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16834999336

This one is quite a bit more expensive, but more portable.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16835192013

They have the most overall airflow.

Will these work even though my laptop is a hefty 17" widescreen?

pretty sure..

I know the one in my first link will work, it will just hang off on the sides a little. Not completely sure on the second one as I have not tried it, but I would assume so because there is really nothing preventing it from fitting on. It will probably just hang off like the first one.

Do these things even really work that good? I hardly see how blowing air on the computer itself will help anything. I could just sit up a fan nearby it and accomplish the same thing.

They do work, typically because the inlet air vents on most laptops are on the bottom....thus forcing air through the vents from the bottom increases the efficency of airflow through the laptop. Exhaust air is typically vented through the rear heatsink for the cpu and up through the keyboard for the rest of the system, this keeps dust from getting in between the keys and in the system.

Cool. I just purchased the BYTECC Notebook Cooling Pad. I hope it works nicely with my 17", thats my only concern. I'll let ya guys know how it works out for me.

Anyone have any pictures of this cooling pad in use?

No, but on my 15.4" laptop, it only hangs off the sides about 1 cm in case you were wondering.

Just did a little test, before getting the cooler. After about 45 minutes of playing WoW, my temps were...

CPU -- 72C
GFX Card -- 65C

think that should be right, since ur playin games..