Heat Insulators for Laptops

Alex Bischoff writes "The Gadgeteer has a review of a product called LapPads from LapLogic. They're heat-insulating pads to protect you from cooking your lap when using your laptop. Depending on the model, they apparently provide up to 57 degrees (F) reduction in heat transfer. Why didn't someone think of this sooner?"

Comments

Get your physics straight.

[CobwoyNeal]

57 degrees reduction in surface temperature doesn't just depend on the pad, it assumes a a laptop with certain thermal characteristics and surface area and power use. It could be any laptop, since they don't tell you which, so they might as well be pulling the number out of their ass. The thermal resistivity of a planar surface should just be quoted in watts per degree celcius per square centimeter, ok? This is ridiculous. It reminds me of the History channel talking about "pounds of energy" in a wave. Get the units straight or you might as well be pulling a number out of your ass.

I love it

[American AC in Paris]

Dozens of comments along the lines of "Duh, you'll cook your laptop if you don't let the heat out!" Every single time a new product is presented on Slashdot, we get to hear from the peanut gallery of armchair designers trumpeting the single most obvious potential design trap that product could encounter.

Rangefinders for cars? Durr, what about oncoming traffic--it'd make your car flip out! Robotic vaccuum cleaner? Hah hah, what about my stairs? Hard-drive based music player? What if you drop it? Wouldn't it a-splode? Drinking straw? What if you accidentally put it up your nose instead of in your mouth? Huh? What then? Chaos!

Reading the FA aside, does it ever occur to people that a company in the business of making heat-dissipating pads specifically designed to work with laptops just might take the internal temperature of the laptop into consideration? Do people really think that products are designed by an army of Mr. Magoo clones?

Yeah, design mistakes happen, but seriously--if you're able to think of a potential problem after ten seconds' worth of thought, do you really think it likely that the design team wouldn't have considered the exact same thing?

Re:I love it

[Anonymous Coward]

No. Companies are in the business of selling their product. They don't really care if your laptop dies or not - so long as you don't blame them for it. And what average computer-ignorant person would? They're most likely going to blame the laptop manufacturer for a dead harddrive or whatnot - even if they have been running their laptop at high temperatures.

So yeah, you bet the company has considered the effect of overheating laptops - and they probably don't care. When Dell starts shipping a 'laptop heat insulator' for use with Dell laptops - then I'll believe they worked out all the relevant problems that a consumer should care about. Still your faith in commercial designers is worrisome. There are examples of poor design everywhere, and if you haven't noticed it in things you've bought and used, then you haven't been very observant.

Re:I love it

[American AC in Paris]

No. Companies are in the business of selling their product. They don't really care if your laptop dies or not - so long as you don't blame them for it. And what average computer-ignorant person would? They're most likely going to blame the laptop manufacturer for a dead harddrive or whatnot - even if they have been running their laptop at high temperatures.

...so do you assume that your pen is going to fail and leak ink all over your letter, seeing as Bic doesn't really car about whether or not their pen works--so long as you don't blame them?

You think that the folks who made the alternator in your car just kinda half-assed it, in the hopes that you don't know enough about cars alternators to be able to trace the problem to their product?

I'm all for a healthy level of skepticism when it comes to evaluating new products, but to assume that any given company is looking to sell you snake oil is silly. Most companies do care about making a quality product. They also care about making money--the two aren't mutually excusive.

What's more, while many users wouldn't have a clue as to how to go about testing LapLogic's claims, it's freakin' trivial for a moderately tech-saavy laptop user to monitor the temperature of their laptop and compare the results between tabletop, bare lap, and laptop pad. We're not talkin' mass spectrometer analysis of the secret sauce, here.

Still your faith in commercial designers is worrisome. There are examples of poor design everywhere, and if you haven't noticed it in things you've bought and used, then you haven't been very observant.

There's a difference between being a blind fool and being willing to give a company the benefit of the doubt. When you buy a shower curtain, do you worry about whether or not it will disintegrate when exposed to water? When you buy coffee, do you wonder if the manufacturer mixed rabbit shit into the beans to increase volume? Do you have proof that dismisses these concerns?

What reason do I have to believe that this company has released a product that doesn't do the two things it explicitly states it can do, especially when the two claims are so easily tested? Should I really just assume that small businesses are out to fuck me over for my dollar, until proven otherwise?

Re:Effect on laptops

[Rufus88]

Whether or not that was the best design for dissipating heat is a separate discussion for another day. The fact remains that the laptop *is* dissipating heat this way, and the designers of the pad *know* it, and they are knowingly circumventing it.

Thats not what the website says...

[Delta-9]

The website states:

"LapLogic specializes in Laptop Desks & LapPads that provide up to 57F protection from laptop heat without increasing CPU temperatures. In fact, with our Traveler LapPads,
your CPU will actually run cooler! "

If the heat is "bounced back" into the laptop, how is the CPU running cooler?