Bad microphone positioning

Recently I was chatting with my friend on Skype, the free internet phone network, and I noticed a rather loud and strange sound coming intermittently from his end of the line.

Eventually we traced the problem - at the time he was using his laptop's built-in microphone and speakers to make the call to me. However his microphone was mounted in the computer's case just next to the CD drive and not far from the fan. So every time his laptop's fan switched on or he accessed the CD drive I was bombarded with a very irritating loud noise.

Why on earth did the laptop makers decide to put the microphone there, embedded in the case next to the CD drive and fan? It would be totally useless for recording anything important as it made even a casual phone conversation difficult.

Needless to say, my friend's now invested in a proper microphone headset :-)