Recently, my IBM Thinkpad T41p has been making a lot of noise with the fan. It sort of whirrs up and down throughout the day. Also, when booting up it was starting to creak when the fan turns on...making a bad churning sort of noise. I figure that's a bad sign. I'm thinking I need to replace the whole computer.
Finally, I slow down enough to wonder if maybe I can just replace the fan. Behold the power of the web. Others have had a similar issue. The fan is a part of the computer we can expect to replace. It was so wonderful to find links like these: