New BIOS for some Dell Laptops might fix poor performance

If you own a Latitude Exxxx or Precision Mxxxx laptop from Dell, you might want to download a new BIOS, especially if it seems to be underperforming. Every laptop is designed to slow down as it detects over heating of the CPU. This is normal.

However, it turns out that Dell over engineered these newest laptops and in a few cases, the computer slows down, sometimes dramatically, when it shouldn’t.

Here’s an article from Adrian Kingsley-Hughes on ZDNet about it. I found that the links don’t work, so you may have to manually go to the downloads page and find it. If your laptop is affected, you will see a very recent (like 12/1/09) date for the BIOS.
http://blogs.zdnet.com/hardware/?p=6347&tag=nl.e019

IMPORTANT NOTE: Be careful when applying a BIOS update. Be sure to have the AC power attached. Loss of power during a BIOS upgrades can be a very big problem….