SamuraiCatJB

make a sleeve. get scrap cloth from the store, make a pillow case for it (i.e. one fold, two sides sewn). You will find some good materials cheap because they are too small to make anything too complicated. But a single yard will be large for what you are talking about. And since after you sew it, you turn it inside out, most of your sewing mistakes aren't shown. But if you are worried they have cheap sewing guides to help you sew in a straight line.

I do this for my flutes now.

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And now, Grandfather, I ask you to bless the White Man. He needs your Wisdom, your guidance. You see, for so long, he has tried to destroy my people, and only feels comfortable when given power. Bless them, show them the peace we understand, teach them humility. For I fear they will someday destroy themselves and their children, As they have done so Mother Earth. I plead, I cry. After all, They are my Brothers.... ~ Prayer ~

daver

actually, i have made my own sleeve, but it's not working too well. i've taken 5 pillow cases that i bought from a Salvation Army store, sewn them all together, and even tried to make some pockets for CD/DVD cases, etc. it worked well for the first few days. but my text books and water bottle seem to be able to poke through the 5 layers of cloth and scratch the black plastic on the top of my laptop. don't ask me how a text book or water bottle can scratch a surface underneath 5 layers of cloth. i couldn't explain to you, but that's what happened, at least 3 times now. i've used a black Sharpie to draw over the hideous white lines that run from end to end of my laptop cover.

anyways, i don't have anything to carry my laptop around with, except my backpack. i was planning on getting something cheap (like $20) as a carrying case sort of thing for my laptop. a sleeve seemed to be the best option: extremely cheap (i've heard of some going for $15 CAD) and the material is good enough to prevent from scratches from everyday use.

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Rampax

Heres an idea, why dont you try to underclock your video card. Although it may be hard to find a program to do this if you have integrated video.

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joepagIII

try speedswitchxp

Cyker

Does your Sempron support PowerNow! or Cool'n'Quiet?

There are apps that let you hack the clock speed and (more importantly!) the CPU core voltage, which is really cool.

I recently got an Athlon64 and have discovered it will drop it's voltage to 1.1v when under low/no load, but jump it back up to 1.4 when it needs to. The upshot is the thing runs ridiculously cool because so little power is going through it!


If yours is an AMD64-based Sempron as opposed to an AthlonXP one you might be able to tweak that stuff... if not, I'm not sure