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Apple Hints At Future Liquid-Cooled Laptops
Lumenary7204 writes "According to the Register, Apple recently received US Patent Application No. 20080291629 for a 'liquid-cooled portable computer.' The filing describes a system where a 'pump ... coupled to the heat pipe is configured to circulate the liquid coolant through the heat pipe.' All claims of obviousness aside (after all, PC enthusiasts have been using liquid and phase-change cooling for years), the existence of the patent application seems to indicate that laptop manufacturers are in agreement with physicists and engineers who say we are running up against the practical limits of air-cooling such compact pieces of equipment."
The university of Chalmers in Sweden has been experimenting with liquid Nitrogen for some time now and their solution (while not cheap) is extremely effective for cooling of small electronic devices. Give it some time and I'm sure this will made it into mainstream (and Abble may very possibly claim that they invented the thing as well).
It's time to realise that Abble's products are the biggest abomination these days. Just say NO to the dumb iAbble way!!
my father has got one of those huge 19" laptops with a 3ghz+ pentium 4 processor and geforce 5xxx graphic chipset
unless we put something under it so there is some room between the laptop and the table, it completely overheats as soon as i stress it (a simple game that a pc like that hsould easily handle. Diablo 2 or so) -_-. even with some room under it, it only takes a few minutes for it to get seriously hot (you can actually feel from the outside of the laptop where the hot spots are)
i wonder what ever made them create such stupid laptops (and what made my father buy one -_-)
I would be interested to see the energy difference between a laptop with a fan versus water cooling. I know that the specs haven't been released yet, but it seems like pumping water around would eat up the battery.
I have a HP laptop which runs fairly hot, but that's still better, as far as I'm concerned, than carrying around a heavy pump that uses up the battery.
Of course, if they manage to make it more compact and energy efficient than fans, all the power to them. I would still worry about it leaking and destroying my laptop, though.
Since Apple is trying for a patent for all types of mobile devices on this, it would be particularly interesting to see a water cooled iPhone...
doesn't Hitachi's watercooled laptop from a few years ago count as "prior art"?
ORLY patents serve only two purposes: One being that you have to pay through the nose if you want to do what is the obvious next step in development. And today it seems the logical next step in cooling for mobiles is liquid (as it has been for non mobile computers for, I don't know, a few decades?).
The other purpose is to simply leave your competition behind because they must not use what you patented.
So, of course, Apple is the good guy here, because they force the developers of laptops to come up with new, inspired ideas because they blocked the path of the most obvious one?
No, wait, ain't it usually MS blocking paths and Apple coming up with something fancy? I'm confused here...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
It could be they are considering pumps with no moving parts, like the one described here: http://danamics.com/technology/pump.aspx
10 ?"Hello World" life was simple then
After reading the specification, it sure sounds to me like a description of a prototype product on which Apple is trying to get patent protection. Some of the specifics in the specification are just too, well, specific -- for example, the description in [0034] of the use of a Venturi tube, or the parenthetical comment in [0035] about the use of ultrasonic frequencies in the membrane pump.
Possibly the biggest detail, though -- and the one bit of novelty I think I see in the specification that could form the basis of an allowable patent claim -- is the comment in [0041] that the heat may be coupled to the outside world by a plate behind the display. This is exactly the kind of novelty nugget -- assuming it really is novel -- to which I referred in my earlier comment. One way Apple could get an allowance on this application, after the initial rejection by the examiner, is to include this feature in an independent claim; the invention would then be a liquid-cooled laptop with the heat exchanger behind the display. (Of course, in that case your liquid-cooled laptop that doesn't have the heat exchanger behind the display wouldn't infringe on the resulting patent.)
As I said, assuming that it is a novel feature. PC design is not my specialty. Has anyone seen art before May 22, 2007 -- the filing date of this application -- describing a liquid-cooled laptop with the heat exchanger behind the display?
How would this fit in with Apple's recent fascination to produce "green" notebooks? What is the environmental impact? Would disposing of them present any issues?
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I can't help but wonder if this does make it to market, will Apple be forced to extend their warranty to cover liquid damage? As it is now, if they see even a tiny spec of corrosion ANYWHERE in your computer after opening it up, they will immediately close it and send it back to you without repair. The reasoning for this of course is that if the laptop was damaged by water or liquids, then it couldn't possibly be Apple's fault, and would therefore fall under 'abuse'. In other words, apple can't be held liable for your idiocy.
So what happens when Apple starts shipping laptops with liquids circulating around inside? That means that if the laptop suffered liquid damage it could potentially be Apple's fault, and therefore wouldn't it be covered under warranty? Just a thought.
For lack of a better signature...