Laptop cooling pads are trash. Most of the heat that people are primarily worried about comes from inside the computer and most problems are simply due to dust accumulation in fans and the boards. Applying a cooling unit externally does little to really alleviate the source of the problem. For the XPS, I'm hesitant to really open it up after I just bought it to check out how the cooling system is set up since I always lose a damn screw or I generally lose some sturdiness from the chassis because there are parts that are hard to kind of push back if they fell out on the screw job. But I mean, if it gets bad then I'd consider returning it or seeing if I could soup it up somehow with a custom job. For now I'm literally trying to cut back on as many software processes as possible and seeing how that affects thing. Thanks for the heads up though. :> I had bought a Targus external fan awhile back and did some basic measurements, I really didn't see quantifiable proof that justified the annoyance.