How can I decrease the frequency of the fan running on my laptop?

Question

I am an Ubuntu 11.10 user with a laptop with a noisy fan. the fan runs way too frequently, blowing when all I'm doing is web browsing. I am willing to sacrifice speed for a less hot laptop, can someone please tell me how to make my fan turn on less frequently? Any help will be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

First, depending on the age of the laptop, clean out the vents.

lesswatts has a comprehensive set of tutorials to reduce power use:

http://www.lesswatts.org/tips/index.php

For the cpu speed see

http://www.webupd8.org/2011/07/cpu-frequency-scaling-indicator-fixed.html