I use a laptop, a wireless keyboard and mouse, and HD monitor. I hardly ever use the laptop’s keyboard, yet I have to keep the lid up due to the heat. This causes dust to build up on the keyboard.

Has anyone come up with an effective way to keep the machine cool while the lid is closed? Those fan units are ok, but not sufficient for when the lid is down (also, almost all of them have annoying LEDs these days).

If you look close you see small openings under the keys - this is air passage. It must be open and most laptop manuals tell you not to use those plastic keyboard covers. Try a lite cloth that can breath well and just clean that sometimes. I cover my printer like that when not in use.

Turn your laptop upside down and have your fan unit sitting on top of the laptop blowing air downwards on to the bottom of the laptop.

As heat risies this will solve your problem.

The underside of a keyboard is solid...no airflow through it. Therefore a keyboard protecter does not affect air flow. The heat you feel is just radiated heat from the underlying motherboard/CPU/hard drive/etc...not heat from air movement as the fan is sucking air in and the blowing it out over CPU/GPU cooling fins/through the outlet. With the lid closed it actually helps to absorb and radiate heat...sure it gets warm also because of these actions...but it's not making your computer run any hotter.

The underside of a keyboard is solid...no airflow through it. Therefore a keyboard protecter does not affect air flow. The heat you feel is just radiated heat from the underlying motherboard/CPU/hard drive/etc...not heat from air movement as the fan is sucking air in and the blowing it out over CPU/GPU cooling fins/through the outlet. With the lid closed it actually helps to absorb and radiate heat...sure it gets warm also because of these actions...but it's not making your computer run any hotter.

Wrong - some maybe yours - many do - I am looking at mine right now and the manual has a notice in bold print page one. Acer Maybe check this one first.

buy whats called a " Laptop strand with cooling fan" can buy them in most computer stores

your laptop fits on top ,theres a fan in the middle of the stand

pulling air thru your laptop

I own one keeps laptop cool