Fried Laptops

[AlanHo]

One of my grandson's brought his dead laptop over yesterday to see whether I could get it working.

He said it had switched itself off suddenly, would not boot up and smelled "funny". I couldn't smell anything so I tried to boot it from the battery - nothing happened.

I then plugged in the power supply to try another re-boot but before I had a chance of pressing the start button I saw a whiff of smoke from the laptop side vents accompanied by the unmistakable odour of frying electrical insulation.

It transpires that he has a habit of using the laptop in bed propped on the bedclothes - thus unwittingly blocking off the ventilation slots.

This is the third dead laptop that has been brought to me this year by family and friends who were ignorant of the fact that you should not prop a laptop on a soft surface like a bed, carpet or the arm of a sofa etc. for what will eventually become obvious reasons.

It might be worth reminding the kids in your family - both young and old - of such consequences

 

[alphanumeric]

My daughter got an HP netbook for Christmas, that was one of the first things I warned her about. She looked at me with that puzzled look, but clued in latter on when she started using it, and realized how hot it can get. I'm sure she would have put it on a pillow or on her bed if I hadn't warned her.

 

[theog]

Have a look at buying a cool pad.

Laptop cooler - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[fishnbanjo]

+1!

 

[noobvious]

I will definitely remember this, when I get a netbook or laptop....of course, that won't be for a while because I am poor.

 

[zigzag3143]

The same effect can be had by running a process that consumes many resources like a distributed computing app. Seti@home uses your free cpu cycles to search for ET. In using all of your excess cycles it puts a 100% load on a system causing it to overheat and fail. They even have a disclaimer about heat and laptops in their warnings.

 

[Max Peck]

Reminds me of the old Quadram days. We learned that if you let the white cloud out of the chip the computer wouldn't work any more!

-b

 

[rbeldua]

this is very nice warning for everyone...not only we save the bed and the pillow...we save our money for buying new laptops....

thanks for the info Alanho...I am telling my kids now to use laptop cooler when using laptop in bed