SillyDog701 Message Centre

[Antony]

CBS 3 has a story about how a laptop can burn down the house - Laptop Fire Danger.

News video is available on the right of that page (after short commercial).



Cause:

[Don_HH2K]

I'd like to point out that there are many reasons a laptop can overheat and do this sort of thing other than simply having a faulty battery. Physically moving parts, such as hard drives and CD drives, naturally generate heat. The faster the drive, the more heat it generates.

This usually isn't a problem, but let's take a situation where you decide to copy whatever's on a CD to your hard drive at full-speed, and try running a PC game at the same time. The CD drive and hard drive platters are all going to be spinning all at once, and on top of that you're causing your graphics processor to heat up. If things get hot enough, most laptops have a temperature throttle that will cut the power if things go over a certain temperature. That isn't to say that damage won't be done by the time it kicks in -- you could be looking at a potential hazard due to melted plastic or heated wires.

To note, the most fire-prone peripherals in a laptop are, in order, the battery, hard drive / CD drive, and in certain circumstances, your CPU and/or GPU.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.0.1) Gecko/20060130 Donzilla/1.1PR1 (WML/1.3)

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Laptop: Turion 64 X2 @ 2GHz, 2GB DDR2-667, 100GB HD, ATI Radeon X300, 15" LCD, Seven Ultimate RC

[Tidus]

I used to have an old FIC Cedar laptop (they're extinct!), it was only a Pentium 1 166MHz, and it used to get red hot!

Another thing about laptops, is that apart from causing fires, they can cause infertility!

If kept on your lap (males only, this doesn't apply to females, lucky girls!) the heat generated by a laptop can keep sperm too warm!

So watch out fellas! I don't use my laptop on my lap any more, even though my Tiny A440 is much more modern than my FIC Cedar (it's a 1GHz CPU), and doesn't emit anywhere near as much heat!

So as well as being an IT Senior Executive, i'm also a part time medical officer

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.0.4) Gecko/20060516 SeaMonkey/1.0.2

[Don_HH2K]

Maybe I should just stay away from my laptop, then... A few more degrees and there'd be no need for a gas range to cook food anymore.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.0.4) Gecko/20060516 Donzilla/1.1 (WML/1.3)

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Laptop: Turion 64 X2 @ 2GHz, 2GB DDR2-667, 100GB HD, ATI Radeon X300, 15" LCD, Seven Ultimate RC

[Antony]