Nethras
Minmatar
Heretic Army
Heretic Nation
   |
Posted - 2009.05.06 07:45:00 -
[1]
Edited by: Nethras on 06/05/2009 07:45:04
 Originally by: Drake Draconis
If there's one thing I hate... is seeing a client walk in my shop with a 3000 dollar laptop damaged because he or she took it too far.
The fact that you think it is even remotely reasonable to call the results of running a laptop at 100% load with factory settings "taking it too far" pretty much relieves me of any worries that you have a clue about what you are saying.
It is trivial to create test code that does enough useless work to hit 100% CPU load. Throwing a completely unreasonable amount of graphics computation into the mix isn't a lot harder. Apple knows what temps 100% load results in if they're testing these things at all. There is no processor temp display with an out of the box MacBook Pro for a user to monitor. There are no warnings that pop up that your machine is getting hot and that you should quit making your computer think too hard. And quite frankly, "safe" operating temperatures have probably been rethought since your father retired - power consumption and heat have become major issues relatively recently, and the limits have been pushed by Intel and other processor manufacturers, and pushed hard.
Now, it's possible that running as hot as modern laptops do may be causing more problems than has been realized. It's possible that Apple's design choices have run them into problems not faced by, say, non-aluminum cased laptops. It's quite possible that Apple could and should improve the cooling systems in their laptops. And it's possible, as a result of the above or other problems, that Apple and/or other computer manufacturers are producing inherently flawed products. How warranties cover the results of such flaws isn't really the point of this conversation, though - the designers of these computers know what temperatures are reached, and unless they're stupid enough to be pulling a Ford Pinto (albeit without the part of it killing people, and with a product that is not designed to minimize cost), believe that these temps are not a problem. It would be interesting to know if that assessment of "not a problem" was over a relatively limited lifetime - say, the length of warranties or a couple years past that - but the assessment is there.
Trying to convince people that the proper operating temperature is under that designed into the product isn't exactly productive. Trying to keep your computer as cool as possible is a perfectly reasonable thing to do, and certainly won't hurt its lifetime, but being concerned about the exact temps being reached when it's not above the specs given by the manufacturers is bordering on paranoid. Advising people to limit the load they place on their computers because of heat issues when the computer is able to ventilate normally is just silly.
|