I'll have to make this short (which is terribly hard for me to do), because my laptop could shut down on me at any time, which is the problem.
My HP laptop is shutting down spontaneously more & more frequently! I think it's overheating. I took off the back panel to clean out the dust and this may have helped a bit. It's sitting on a cooling fan which I bought when this first started happening. Is this going to be an easy & unexpensive fix (replace the fan maybe?) or could this be something more serious & costly. My laptop is fairly old and I'd love to get a new one, but it is definitely not in our budget right now. I know that sometimes the cost of fixing things can sometimes be as much as replacing with something new.
It's really annoying and
it really limits my time on MobileRead! 
Any thoughts or advice?
I do have my stuff backed-up just in case.