A few weeks ago I remarked that the HP Mini-Note, like most laptops, gets rather warm when you place it on your lap. In fact, I think the Mini-Note gets hotter than pretty much any other computer I've used. Joanna Stern of Laptop Magazine agreed that the Mini-Note at least feels hotter than most laptops. But she decided that her first impression wasn't good enough and so she went about conducting an actual honest to goodness test, with a thermometer and everything.

The results? As you can see in the chart above, the Mini-Note gets hotter than any of the other PCs she tested. At least on the underside, which is the part you'll most likely be putting on your lap.

The results were a bit more mixed when she measured the temperatures of the keyboard and the touchpad. While the Mini-Note is certainly warm on top, it was by no means the warmest of the bunch. The Dell latitude D630, by the way, is not an ultraportable. And it consistently scored the coolest temperatures. So the moral of this lesson: Less surface area often means less ventilation. And that could lead to some sweat-worthy computing.