Laptop hotter than normal

[Rigmarole]

I have a Dell Inspiron 1440 laptop that's been very noisy since I installed Natty. When idle in Maverick, the fans would usually spin all the way down. When idle in Natty, the fans are 2 or even 3 steps above their baseline and the laptop gets unusually warm. I've heard that kernels above .38 have a power regression; would that contribute to an overall increase in the computer's temperature? On average the laptop uses 20-30% CPU, so I installed cpufrequtils and set both cores to powersave, but that didn't seem to help. Here's the output from lm-sensors:

acpitz-virtual-0
Adapter: Virtual device
temp1:    +53.5°C (crit = +100.0°C)         

coretemp-isa-0000
Adapter: ISA adapter
Core 0:   +47.0°C (high = +105.0°C, crit = +105.0°C) 

coretemp-isa-0001
Adapter: ISA adapter
Core 1:   +46.0°C (high = +105.0°C, crit = +105.0°C)

and the output from cpufreq-info

analyzing CPU 0:
 driver: acpi-cpufreq
 CPUs which run at the same hardware frequency: 0 1
 CPUs which need to have their frequency coordinated by software: 0
 maximum transition latency: 10.0 us.
 hardware limits: 1.20 GHz - 2.20 GHz
 available frequency steps: 2.20 GHz, 1.60 GHz, 1.20 GHz
 available cpufreq governors: conservative, ondemand, userspace, powersave, performance
 current policy: frequency should be within 1.20 GHz and 2.20 GHz.
         The governor "powersave" may decide which speed to use
         within this range.
 current CPU frequency is 1.20 GHz.
 cpufreq stats: 2.20 GHz:9.73%, 1.60 GHz:0.54%, 1.20 GHz:89.73% (7631)
analyzing CPU 1:
 driver: acpi-cpufreq
 CPUs which run at the same hardware frequency: 0 1
 CPUs which need to have their frequency coordinated by software: 1
 maximum transition latency: 10.0 us.
 hardware limits: 1.20 GHz - 2.20 GHz
 available frequency steps: 2.20 GHz, 1.60 GHz, 1.20 GHz
 available cpufreq governors: conservative, ondemand, userspace, powersave, performance
 current policy: frequency should be within 1.20 GHz and 2.20 GHz.
         The governor "powersave" may decide which speed to use
         within this range.
 current CPU frequency is 1.20 GHz.
 cpufreq stats: 2.20 GHz:0.37%, 1.60 GHz:0.00%, 1.20 GHz:99.63% (1)

Any advice on cooling down my laptop, even if it means downgrading the kernel, would be appreciated. Thanks

[GreyGeek]

Re: Laptop hotter than normal

You have two choices: downgrade the kernel, or downgrade Kubuntu to your previous version. This problem is affecting most distros because the kernel is universal among distros.

[Rigmarole]

Re: Laptop hotter than normal

Downgrading the kernel definitely helped . I grabbed 2.6.36 from http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/, and average temperature dropped by 4 degrees.

acpitz-virtual-0
Adapter: Virtual device
temp1:    +48.5°C (crit = +100.0°C)         

coretemp-isa-0000
Adapter: ISA adapter
Core 0:   +42.0°C (high = +105.0°C, crit = +105.0°C) 

coretemp-isa-0001
Adapter: ISA adapter
Core 1:   +41.0°C (high = +105.0°C, crit = +105.0°C)

[GreyGeek]

Re: [Solved] Laptop hotter than normal

My dual core averages between 38 and 40C during most operations. When I play videos or do heavy graphics they will rise to 57C