The Thremaltake GOrb II -
The GOrb II is true to its name (at least when you pull it out of the box) it is a small spherical object that is very portable. But the GOrb II is not meant to be an orb at all, instead it is intended to be separated into two pieces and placed under your laptop to keep things cool (and also to make it more comfortable to use).

Each half of the GOrb II has a small fan in it (you know to keep air flowing) at the “top” is a rounded rubber pad that Thermaltake says should rest on your desk. The fan side has three rubber feet, each of these feet has a small magnet. The two halves of the GOrb II are held together by magnets in the feet. This helps keep all the cables nicely wrapped up. In-between the two halves is a small spool (again to help with cable storage).

The fans are 70mm spinning at 2200RPM and capable of pushing 23CFM of air. They are almost inaudible even in quiet rooms with a rated noise of 27.7 dBA. You can use the GOrb II on notebooks up to 17-inches in size. To keep the two fans powered TT (Thermaltake) gives you a USB adapter/extender. This cable runs from your USB port to one fan which is connected to the other by a cable. Both cables are sheathed in braided cloth for durability (which is a nice touch).

Before we move onto performance we want to talk about how to use this product. According to Thermaltake you are supposed to place the rounded rubber end on your desktop and then put your computer on the three legs of each fan. This is intended to give an automatic tilt to the system while keeping the fans blowing cool air right on the underside of your laptop. Now we tested the GOrb II in this configuration with a 15.4-inch Samsung Series-7 Chronos laptop, but one that was also only 4.8 pounds; most of which was in the touch screen. When we got everything setup the laptop felt unstable and wobbly. At one point when I was feeling the lower edge of the screen to get a gauge of temperature the book fell over backwards. The rounded ends of the GOrb II and the weight of the thick touch screen on our Series 7 Chronos were too much to keep stable.

What we found that worked best for our laptop was to flip the GOrb II over. This provided significantly more stability and, as you will see below, did not cost us much in the way of cooling.