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Six Laptops That Don't Burn
digihome writes, "An exploding laptop can really ruin your weekend, so here's a review of six laptops that are unlikely to blow up." From the article: "We evaluated everything from battery and air vent temperatures, AC power draw and battery life to performance and price... What we found is that there's a real difference among those notebooks that know how to take the heat without sacrificing performance."
Why not just buy one of the OLPC machines? Price to performance and considering heat produced, nothing else can come close. I'm sure once Brazil and other countries start receiving theirs, we'll see them all over ebay for a bargain.
Seriously though, this is a great list, except for the fact that the machines are pretty expensive. If I was to blow that type of money on a laptop, I'd probably go for the Toshiba. But until then, I'll stick with my $500 Dell laptop. Sure it's a little bit slower (1.8Ghz I believe), but the battery is too small to catch anything on fire.
Crack - Free with every butt and set of boobs
...story ever.
F1rst p0st
I don't recall ever being worried that my macbook might explode
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
Sony's name isn't on the list.
Slashvertising at its finest!
Any article that actually considers a laptop from Twinhead as a viable option loses all credibility, even if it does come last. They're junk. My most recent experience with a single Twinhead laptop involved two new hard drives, new RAM, a flakey power socket, a hinge that barely works and a battery pack with a failed cell (it splutters if you have the battery connected.) Prior experience involves machines that didn't come with the right bits and didn't recognise their own floppy drives.
Am I the only one getting this article rendered as though the CSS was written by throwing the keyboard down the stairs? (Firefox 2 on Linux)
after intel core 2 duo
Lithium fires like those that occur when a laptop battery explodes are extremely dangerous. Just watch this video.
I'm posting this from my sweet Sony Vaio notebook powered by the everlasting Sony battery and I%&#@+++ NO CARRIER
I don't get how having a cool notebook translates into a battery that doesn't blow up. As far as I remember, the whole battery recall was because of a slight possibility of an internal short in LiIon cells. This had everything to do with manufacturing process and perhaps gravity, and nothing at all to do with the rest of the notebook. To suggest that these products avoided the recall because of their design is ignorant. They avoided the recall because they sourced different batteries.
Granted, a cooler notebook will result in longer batteries, since heat will reduce the effective capacity over time. That is the only advantage, from a power standpoint.
I am already a big fan of Panasonic's Tough Book series. The fact that they earn high marks in yet another review, power consumption and heat dissipation, merely cements my opinion of them as a top choice notebook.
I would previously recommend ThinkPads, but even before moving to Levono the quality was waning. The only thing the ThinkPad has that is superior is a longer warranty. Always buy the longest extended warranty possible for a laptop if you actually take it back and forth to school or work. The failure rate is abysmal. I pretty much expect a laptop to last a year without repair which translates to expect having to buy a new laptop a year after the warranty runs out.
No joke. My IBM thinkpad has died from too much abuse. I'm either going to have it repaired, or get something new. So, how hard is a Linux install on a toughbook CF51?
Yeah, Dell has bad press lately. But that particular model uses a Samsung battery, not a Sony model. Very low draw, very good thermal characteristics. I've accidentally put it in my bag (which is a VERY snug fit) while running apps that kept it from entering standby several times - even after running in a sealed bag for a couple of hours, it's still running nice and solid. The bad and laptop were warm, but not at all hot. Having a Core Duo, 2 gigs of RAM, built-in mobile broadband, and still getting 5 hours of real-world runtime out of it are pretty nice, too.
Oh, you're not stuck, you're just unable to let go of the onion rings.
My most recent experience with a single Twinhead laptop involved two new hard drives, new RAM, a flakey power socket, a hinge that barely works and a battery pack with a failed cell (it splutters if you have the battery connected.
:)
But what about the heat output? The convenient volume control wheel on the front edge? The "magnesium screen lid and bottom case with an attractive finish that looks like carbon fiber"?!
You didn't address the important stuff!
Everything I need to know about copyrights I learned from Slashdot.
All notebooks are safe just put 4-inch FANS around it for extra cooling.
Heat doesnt matter if the stupid thing has a crappy little 1280x800 screen... thats just sad... What is up with all the new laptops having that? My 4 year old $1000 laptop runs a 1400x1050 on a 15" screen but I can't find anything like that anymore that isn't over 2 grand.
What a crew of fags. no real meat in the article... cos they're taking it all up their asses.
Am I the only one who finds the mere topic of this review more than a little startling? Back when I used to read PC World as a kid and drool over the PII w/ MMC, I never would have dreamed of being worried about the pyrotechnic features (or lack there of) in a computer. Strange times.... I think I might still prefer a computer marketed "with math co-processor" to one that "won't blow up as much as the other guys'"
[/sarcasm]
A "wide screen" must be better than ANYTHING in a old fashioned 4:3 ratio, right? That's Sooo 1990's!
Yeah, I liked my 1400x1050 screen too, but true hi-rez takes a back-seat to watching the latest video in the correct format...
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
-1 Juvenile.
b0s0z0ku, moderation is done by the moderators, using moderation points. Aside from changing the score so people can select or avoid articles, that method also cuts down on clutter. What a waste of a +1 posting ability.
"... only had a battery surface temperature of 76 degrees, slightly above room temperature."
My room temperature is 20 degrees thats 56 degrees diference...
I have owned four laptops (Li-ion) and none of them have had any problems with heat or burning batteries.
I am even using my sony laptop to post this to slashdot, it barely feels warm.
Actually I suppose it is a bit hot...
AHHHHHH MY HANDS. IT BURNS, I
I've got a Toughbook tablet PC at work and I've got to say, it's an incredible machine (build wise). I've dropped it at least two times from table height onto a hard floor with just a small scratch in the corner. It's really hard to justify the price though. The only reason I needed it at work is because I mostly do field support of industrial control systems, and the 500 nits screen is much easier to read than the crummy 180 nits you find on most laptops. Oh, and the battery lasts about 5 hours to boot!
Are you about to succumb to the elements, or do you live in France?
Is there a difference?
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Atheism, not religion, is the real force behind the mass murders of history
... two thousand years of Christian fulminating against the Jews."
RANCHO SANTA FE, CALIF. - In recent months, a spate of atheist books have argued that religion represents, as "End of Faith" author Sam Harris puts it, "the most potent source of human conflict, past and present."
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Columnist Robert Kuttner gives the familiar litany. "The Crusades slaughtered millions in the name of Jesus. The Inquisition brought the torture and murder of millions more. After Martin Luther, Christians did bloody battle with other Christians for another three centuries."
In his bestseller "The God Delusion," Richard Dawkins contends that most of the world's recent conflicts - in the Middle East, in the Balkans, in Northern Ireland, in
Kashmir, and in Sri Lanka - show the vitality of religion's murderous impulse.
The problem with this critique is that it exaggerates the crimes attributed to religion, while ignoring the greater crimes of secular fanaticism. The best example of religious persecution in America is the Salem witch trials. How many people were killed in those trials? Thousands? Hundreds? Actually, fewer than 25. Yet the event still haunts the liberal imagination.
It is strange to witness the passion with which some secular figures rail against the misdeeds of the Crusaders and Inquisitors more than 500 years ago. The number sentenced to death by the Spanish Inquisition appears to be about 10,000. Some historians contend that an additional 100,000 died in jail due to malnutrition or illness.
These figures are tragic, and of course population levels were much lower at the time. But even so, they are minuscule compared with the death tolls produced by the atheist despotisms of the 20th century. In the name of creating their version of a religion-free utopia, Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, and Mao Zedong produced the kind of mass slaughter that no Inquisitor could possibly match. Collectively these atheist tyrants murdered more than 100 million people.
Moreover, many of the conflicts that are counted as "religious wars" were not fought over religion. They were mainly fought over rival claims to territory and power. Can the wars between England and France be called religious wars because the English were Protestants and the French were Catholics? Hardly.
The same is true today. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not, at its core, a religious one. It arises out of a dispute over self-determination and land. Hamas and the extreme orthodox parties in
Israel may advance theological claims - "God gave us this land" and so forth - but the conflict would remain essentially the same even without these religious motives. Ethnic rivalry, not religion, is the source of the tension in Northern Ireland and the Balkans.
p>Yet today's atheists insist on making religion the culprit. Consider Mr. Harris's analysis of the conflict in Sri Lanka. "While the motivations of the Tamil Tigers are not explicitly religious," he informs us, "they are Hindus who undoubtedly believe many improbable things about the nature of life and death." In other words, while the Tigers see themselves as combatants in a secular political struggle, Harris detects a religious motive because these people happen to be Hindu and surely there must be some underlying religious craziness that explains their fanaticism.
Harris can go on forever in this vein. Seeking to exonerate secularism and atheism from the horrors perpetrated in their name, he argues that Stalinism and Maoism were in reality "little more than a political religion." As for Nazism, "while the hatred of Jews in Germany expressed itself in a predominantly secular way, it was a direct inheritance from medieval Christianity." Indeed, "The holocaust marked the culmination of
One finds the same inanities in Mr. Dawkins's work. Don't be fooled by this rhetorical legerdemain. Dawkins and Harris cannot explain why, if Nazism was
Just like when buying any other product these days, my number one concern when buying a computer is "It won't explode, right?". Now I can be sure to not get shafted by craft sales representatives trying to sell me explosive goods.
It was a 12.1" one, compare to the 15" CF-51... despite the hard-drive supposedly being surrounded by the shock-absorbing protective stuff, even its seeks would send out shrill rattles amplified by the magnesium case. I didn't expect the optical drive on such a tiny laptop to be quiet, but the sheer grinding racket it made was alarming, not to mention painful. Thankfully, I wasn't dumb enough to buy a $3000 laptop from a place without a decent return policy.
The bigger laptop mentioned in the article might be better (if heavier), but only comes with a 1.44" floppy drive and a DVD/CD-RW drive - from looking around, it appears that an optional DVD-Multi drive can be bought, but only as a separate item - not an upgrade. What year is this, again? The lack of a memory card reader is a bit annoying, too, though buying one for the expansion card slot wouldn't cost too much.
Those laptops might not blow up, but I'm pretty sure they'll burn a hole in your pocket. The high performance ones (core 2 duos, 2 gigs RAM, etc) range from $2,100 - $3,000. I can get a dell with similar specs for $1,600 and 2 years of free repairs. Sorry but I'm taking my chances with the C4 battery laptops.
I read that the Panasonic's fan exhaust temperature was ONLY 97 degrees, and the surface of the battery measured ONLY 76. This confused me because they failed to mention that the temperature is in degrees Fahrenheit!
This P-P-P-Powerbook won't burn.
I've wondered if this was accurate. (Although I have to admit the heat on this thing backs that up; even at full load it just gets "a little warm"; a previous laptop reached "burns your lap" while idling.)
(For reference, this is a Dell Inspiron 6000 with a 1.6GHz Pentium M on the Sonoma (IIRC) chipset.)
I've wondered how accurate that readout is. It offers four or five significant digits which I find hard to believe. If there are any power hackers out there who could tell me if this is reasonably accurate or full of shit, I'd be appreciative. (I've wondered if I'm seriously running what I find a rather nice computer setup overall on less power than a dim incandescent light bulb or our Christmas lights.)
I have to agree with parent post. Twinhead laptops are very disappointing. I own one and using it right now (model E14AL if you care) and only had problems with it. It killed two RAM in the first 3 months, then had to replace the motherboard, dvd drive died last month, plastic case is of very bad quality and get scratched very easily (can scratch it with your nails!), and now my the screen fixations are going away. After one year of use, I'm about to buy a new laptop, as I fear it's going to die soon and continually fixing it will prove to be more costly than buying a brand new one (hey, warranty has just expired!).
Ok, about heating problem, it's terrible. First, the fan and air intake are located on the bottom of the laptop, which means u need to use it on a perfectly flat desk and not on your lap or bed as it would obstruct all air flow. Second, the fan sometimes doesn't turn on at all and the laptop ends to power down after overheating too much.
That's my first Twinhead computer and my last one. I don't want to generalize to every single laptop built by Twinhead, but their Efio (EXXX) models are crap. Poor quality parts and bad quality standards. Better pay more and get a more robust computer.
Ced
I am looking for a really cheap laptop/notebook that basically just has a keyboard, screen, and wireless. I just want it to browse the internet or do some coding over the wireless. Is the only option to buy some old piece of junk on eBay or craigs? I can't seem to find a "one laptop per chair" kind of product, they are all like 1k+ with featuritis.
I'm not too sure about the new Twinheads but my 1998 Twinhead was a workhorse. It was a P266 with 32MB RAM and a 3.2GB Hard Drive. It had Win98 and dual-booted into Mandrake 7.0. I used it primarily for programming. The battery died in 2001 and the CD-ROM drive in 2003. Otherwise, it was still going strong. It has endured a lot of (minor) falls. It wasn't until late last year till we put it out to pasture. We only did this because the LCD's hinges were starting to break off.
It was pretty strong for me and served me well.
I quit reading the article when it said 76 and 97 degrees. The yankees are so hillbilly they did not learn to use SI units in over 200 years. Kelvin, Celsius anyone? When water freezes at zero and boils at 100deg, that makes sense. Fahrenheit and Remour does NOT make sense. If America wants to remain competitive against Asia, it must metricate. Don't be stupid to hold against the global tide just because the frenchies invented the metrics.
Six iPods that don't eat your face
Six engineers that aren't cannibals
Six lamps that don't blind you
Six Slashdot articles that aren't racist
Six pillows that don't give you cancer
since when is laptops that DON'T do something NEWS?
as if the NORM for laptops today are ones that BURN?
I had heat problems from my notebook. It's pretty small and I hold it in my hand when I'm travelling so heat was a big problem. (Palm size tablet PC).
http://www.pbus-167.com/chc.htm
If you run at a lower voltage heat buildup can cease to become an issue. My notebook runs cooler, crashes less (never now) and lasts longer on battery.
It can take a little experimentation to get the best settings, but my battery like increased about 50% and being able to force a drop in the clock speed when I travel makes it great to use outside.
I picked up the app from a forum of users of the same model notebook and it's become standard fare for most of the forum members... Damn impressive stuff since it's free.
Makes me wonder how the reviewer would have fared if they tried this on the models that just missed out.
GrpA.
but it's not a Start 4 4oly war
My 5150 has a classic design - the main air intake is underneath. When you put it on your lap, your legs cover the intake, the fan goes nuts and after a while the CPU and/or mobo does a meltdown. I'm on my 3rd mobo/cpu. Whenever you call with a hardware issue their first question is 'are all the rubber feet on?' because if they're not, you can bet its overheated jus sitting on a desk.
For good measure it also sucks up all the crud and deposits on to the heatsink/fan reducing their effectiveness.
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
You'd expect an article headed 6 laptops that do burn not 6 that don't - like it's news some aren't going to explode.
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
I was sure that would be at number one.
- Panasonic Toughbook CF-51
- Jetta Jetbook 9700P
- Velocity NoteMagix L80
- HP Compaq nw8440
- Asus F3Jv
- Twinhead Durabook D13RI
"Best" Choice: Panasonic's Toughbook CF-51I'm a 2000 man.
Science courses in the US use metric. We are just too lazy to change. Think about it, everyone has to completely change their thinking and relearn how to estimate size, temperature, etc. What if you had to change every unit you grew up with?
but I couldn't get past the first paragraph.
Terrible sentence structure, a lack of comparison specs, the summary is seriously lacking, and what is up with those right hand nav bars all over the place?
Moral indignation is jealousy with a halo - H. G. Wells
I can only speak of Dell laptops since that is what I am familiar with....
My 2.5 year old Latitude D600 would be so hot that if I didnt put a pillow barrier between it and my legs, it would feel like a very bad sunburn. But as I often forgot, the pillow would slide and cover the the ONE fan slot on the bottom. Keep in mind, this laptop only became this hot when playing games. The plastics under the video controller felt like they could melt.
Now that I have a new Inspiron 6400, its like going from hell to heaven. They obviously made improvements on cooling with the additional airflow slots on the top, back and many more (3 I think), on the bottom. I think the newer video card doesnt get as hot anyway. No need for that stupid pillow barrier...and just when I was about to break down and buy one of these: aluminum widescreen notebook cooler.
I just got a Sony this past week. It actually runs quite cool and has remarkable battery life. I'm not worried about it blo
since I don't even carry a battery in my laptop. After a couple of years I realized that I never use it when I'm not near an outlet anyway, so I just took it out and left it in the bag. I suppose it could burst into flames there...
Some day you're going to be able to actually be able to carry laptops around without their power cord...
May contain traces of nut.
Made from the freshest electrons.
They're all high-end Intel Core CPU laptops. If they want to pick out some laptops that actually run cool, rather than merely having lots of fans and heat sinks, they should have included some based on VIA Antaur designs.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
So is that going to be the new ad slogan for these laptops? "Buy laptop-X. It doesn't explode on your lap!" Almost as catchy as the Vista ad "Windows Vista - It doesn't suck. Really. No, c'mon ... really. Well, maybe a little."
A company called Altair is making a lithium battery which does not use graphite. The graphite component of Li-Ion batteries is the catalyst for thermal runaway, leading to fire and explosion of the battery.
Their energy density is currently equivalent to NiCd or NiMH, still a bit lower than standard lithium batteries. They are mostly targeted at the hybrid and electric vehicle industry. I think they could be interesting for laptops, too. These batteries can be safely charged or discharged at much higher rates. How would you like a laptop that can be fully charged in a couple of minutes?
Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.
It's great to have cooler laptops, but one must still watch out makers aren't stupid enough to put flammable stickers at the worst place possible, like Dell did with mine.
http://slimcode.com/cs/blogs/martin/archive/2006/1 0/29/Dell-laptops-catching-fire-_2D00_-Was-it-real ly-a-battery-problem_3F00_.aspx
Even though Dell support insisted this was a normal hole in the sticker, I can assure you it burnt! And it's getting worse.
When water freezes at zero and boils at 100deg, that makes sense.
While the metric system makes sense for the most part, I've never gotten Celcius. To a chemist, that line might make sense - but most people in the sciences seem to prefer a more useful scale where zero is the coldest temperature, instead of some arbitrary point. If you are going make a temperature scale for general use, you might as well set 0 and 100 degrees to some value that a common person might relate to, instead of the properties of pure water at a certain pressure. Like setting the coldest outdoor temperature that most people will ever experience at 0 degress, and the hottest outdoor temperature most people well ever experience at 100 degrees, which is pretty much the Fahrenhiet scale.
Having every unit relate to every other by a power of 10 .. THAT is what makes it better.
Truth - except keep your silly metric system out of my technology. For all those devices that innately use powers of two - think anything digital slash binary, computers especially - it makes a LOT more sense for a megabyte to equal 2^20 bytes instead of the silly SI 10^3 bytes.
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