Macbook burns your skin if you arent careful
Laptop 101: Laptops can get hot when used for a long period of time. This is why most laptop users tend to have it resting on a flat surface (desk, pillow, tv tray, etc) when using it. I know when I use my Macbook, I sit on the floor and have it resting on my coffee table. And, if you do wind up using it on your lap, you can just be careful, or get one of those laptop usb cooling fans that attaches to the bottom. Easy right? Well, sometimes this doesnt happen.
Right now, there is a story over on The Consumerist, the consumer advocacy site run owned by Consumer Reports, about a Macbook user who had her Macbook on her lap for a long enough time to cause a blister. Ouch. In her own words:
My boss uses a Macbook Pro 2007. A three year old computer. She uses it both at work and at home – on the desk with a fan at work, and on her lap at home. One day, it felt a little warm, but she didn’t mind – it felt nice! She was just happily doing some accounting for work – in other words, running very small programs that shouldn’t be affecting how hot or slow the Macbook was running. After a couple hours, she realized she was developing a blister.
The rest of the story goes into her issues with Apple when she turned in the laptop for repairs, etc. Macbooks are known to have heat issues from time to time, but I havent read anything about something this severe before. Apple’s response about this issue? Use the Macbook on a flat surface. So much for calling it a laptop.
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If you're too stupid to notice your skin is slowly burning what business do you have owning a computer?
Her story and your article are both ridiculous. You expect people to believe that a laptop burned someone's skin – but without them knowing????? What Universe do you live in? Sounds like a money-scam to me….
One of you must be the same lady that burned her mouth on McDonald's coffee a while back….
The 2007 model of the MacBook Pro could under certain conditions get very hot on your lap. But this is less true of most recent models of MacBook Pro's which are more energy efficient and generate less heat.
Ok what's next, laptop models to match your skin type! Been using Mac laptops for 4 years. Just not a problem.
I've got a 2006 17″ MacBook Pro, and yeah, it does get extremely hot at the cpu–underneath the computer at the top center of the screen, and yes, it actually really gets hot enough to cause a second degree-blistering! This is especially true if you were to operate it on a bed with a plush comforter that insulates and concentrates the heat rather than dissipating it! To blister it only has to get hot enough to boil water which is 212 F. Mine frequently exceeds this temperature, that's why I don't touch it, and never use it on my lap without a $20 Rubbermaid laptop desk I got at Walmart–and I bought two of them one stays at work, and I have another for the house. I have two power supplies too so I leave one at work too, like a docking station. Having used this system for 4 years I find the story quite believable.
Maybe the author doesn't remember, but it was the heat issue that caused Apple to completely abandon the relationship with Motorola & IBM who were trying to jointly resolve the heat issues in the G5 processor that kept it from being usable in the next generation Titanium PowerBook. They couldn't dissipate it's heat efficiently and that prohibited it from being scaled back to operate in a notebook environment. Now that we have Intel based laptops–heat dissipation is the primary reason the whole notebook is made from cast aluminum (it wasn't really for style)–the whole case is designed to act as a heatsink–it's only going to dissipate heat if you allow airflow around it. The two thermal sensors in the case are attached to the case to monitor it's temperature. If the case gets too hot, then the fans cut on and draw cool air in through the top of the keyboard and out through the vents along the hinge.
Apple expects you to put it on a conductive surface to pull the heat away. My Rubbermaid laptop desk is made of metal mesh which allows the heat to radiate so efficiently that the desk underneath (or my legs if I'm at home in my easy chair) stays comfortably cool.
Oh and it's not the size of the application that causes the CPU to get hot, it's the complexity of the mathematical operations it's doing, so accounting applications and spreadsheets will use more CPU cycles than your email or web browser. Gaming applications where the CPU and GPU are calculating millions/billions of texelations per second generate the most heat of all…
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couldn’t dissipate it’s heat efficiently and that prohibited it from being scaled back to operate in a notebook environment. Now that we have Intel based laptops–heat dissipation is the primary reason.