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Laptop Heat May Cause 'Toasted Skin Syndrome'
mrvook submitted an item that might affect a lot of you "Working with a laptop on one's lap for extended periods of time has been found to cause heat damage and skin discoloration in a handful of cases, prompting researchers examining the phenomenon to recommend thermal protection for laptop users and warnings labels on laptop device packaging." Only 10 cases have actually been reported, so this might just be a case of media hyping something, or it could be the end of the world with a generation of nerds doomed to sterility and crunchy crotches.
"...a generation of nerds doomed to sterility..."
Are we really worried about nerds being sterile?
Scientists prove that heat makes things hot and should be avoided when you don't want things to be, you know, hot.
Warning! Keep Out of Eyes! Wash Out with Water! Don't Drink Soap! Dilute! Dilute!
Cool a laptop that is not only powerful, but also eliminates the need for trimming and birth control. Ladies will start looking at the nerd carrying the laptop in a whole new light... ;P
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
Why is it that we as a society feel we need to put warning labels on things for the dumbest of society? If they can't move a hot laptop off their lap, do we really expect them to read a warning label?
My woman can save $50 a month on birth control thanks to my laptop!
Please no more warning labels. They are applied in non-removable paint on my car visor, my child's safety seat, and other rather annoying places.
Why the hell do I as a driver need to be warned about the dangers of... well I don't know what dangers they are warning me about anymore because they are so damned ubiquitous. Removable stickers are fine. Resale of the item means they won't have the warning? Make a website http://warnings.gov/
You go there, pull your product type from a dropdown list and it will have every warning you could possibly want to have on your product, all there in a singular location and available in any language you want, updated instantly.
Oddly enough, I think it was Jay Leno (could be wrong) complaining about how car manuals are nothing but 80 pages of warnings rather than content which you could use to operate/repair your vehicle. Please please please, no more warning labels. I've become immune and now only see them as a bright yellow stain on my upholstry.
Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
My cousin blames his testicular cancer on a decade of using a laptop resting over his crotch. Even though cancer does not run in his family (or mine) and I don't think I believe the laptop is to blame, it could be that it aggravated it.
Meh.
http://warnings.gov/
You go there
If it requires Internet access at the point of warning, then there would still need to be a fallback warning label for people who have dumbphone service for $80/yr instead of smartphone service for $800/yr.
My nuts are on fire but facebook still won't load syndrome. Really, we're going to have a new medical condition caused by stupid user tricks. If you suffer from this you should remember to remove the laptop when your lap gets hot. That is all.
Charter Member of The Committee Group For The Elimination And Eradication Of Repetitive Redundancy
"He recognized that the laptop got hot on the left side; however, regardless of that, he did not change its position," the report says. I think we found the problem. Why say your kid is dumb when you can blame his laptop that he never puts down?
This concerns CHILDREN. The report was from a pediatrics journal and involved kids. As TFA points out, kids' skin is more sensitive to heat than adults, and parents need to be aware of this.
Free Martian Whores!
I'm trying to look for the downside in all of this.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
More accurate would be "LAPTOP USE ON BARE SKIN MAY CAUSE TEMPORARY BLOTCHY THIGHS", but that wouldn't grab people's attention as much.
This is a substitute for a clever sig that fits within the maximum number of characters.
I usually put the sauce on the side. Since these are laptop users we're talking about, I'll assume that the rub is taken care of.
put it in Idle where it belongs
I often like to sit on my couch to use my laptop at home. It's the most convenient to cross my legs with the laptop sitting on top. I have had burns on my leg from the laptop's heat. It heated up slowly enough that I didn't notice until there was a full burn. I know I am not nearly the first one to have this problem. Isn't this the reason in 2000-2002 they were switching to the name "Notebook" instead of "Laptop"?
Because "weenie roast" is too gender-specific
More music, fewer hits
I believe this explains the events which transpired in the film "Children of Men". :)
I heart anarcho-capitalism.
So did these 10 people never learn not to touch the stove while it's on? I mean, that's the measuring stick we use for high heat leading to bad outcomes, right?
...putting your hand in a toaster also causes Toasted Skin Syndrome.
Who woulda thunk it? :(
My parents said this used to happen to them when they were kids.
They grew up in houses that were heated by coal fireplaces - they would sit too close to the fire for too long and the same thing would happen. The cure - stop putting your skin too close to heat sources.
Seriously, I think people have known about this since the discovery of how to make a fire. We just forgot about it for the last 50 years while we all enjoyed our modern heating systems that distribute heat more evenly.
Putting moderation advice in your
Next, remove the skin, placing it on a mandarin crepe that has been spread with a teaspoon of hoisin sauce. Top with a sprig of green onion, then fold/roll into a burrito style package.
Serve, pairing with a reisling, dry Chardonnay or a white Bordeaux.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
...since laptop from now on will be reserved only to one usage.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
(In hysteric Apple fanboy voice) Another epic win for teh iPad! Apple designed it such that it doesn't roast your balls!
(Your wife may of course decide to roast them after you show her the bill.)
8 of 13 people found this answer helpful. Did you?
Specifically referring to my horrendously flawed 1st generation 13" Macbook. Because of the heat generated it was marketed as a "notebook" and even comes with warnings against using it on your lap per the user guide. This has led to many a warm-lap, a melted "mag-safe" power cord, and just recently caused one of the plastic screw holes for the heatsink to actually shatter during use.
They didn't mention this, but laptops can get WAY hotter when doing things like playing games, compared to more general use. Just something to consider.
Possibly, I do remember a long time ago, there was talk about laptops being a known risk for sterility in men. Which wasn't really a shock at the time. The reason why the Balzac hangs out there more or less unprotected is that the equipment is heat sensitive. And needs to be a bit below core temperature. Consequently it wasn't terribly shocking that a device that routinely operates above body temperature and sits on the lap might have some impact on male fertility.
that's why they are called notebooks, not laptops. However if you choose to use your notebook on your lap, they make many fine products to prevent "toasted skin syndrome" like this one from targus. http://reviews.cnet.com/cooling/targus-awe55us-lap-chill/4505-9990_7-33772538.html
What gets me is Im an uneducated nobody who knows this is just stupid people being stupid and these so called highly educated news reporters actually air this crap on the news like its something important.
The reason why the Balzac hangs out there more or less unprotected is that the equipment is heat sensitive.
I thought it hung out half an hour north of Calgary.
Back in the day, we called it a "burn".
There HAS to be some medical term for the condition too. "toasted skin syndrome" is what reporters get for passing off things they made up as medical terminology... And they make laptop coolers and pads for a reason... Maybe because they're hot? I hear touching hot things is bad.
The real problem is people insisting on using bloated inefficient software, which of course requires more electricity to run and produces more heat.
If modern operating systems and software were better optimized most people could get along fine with low power, low heat netbooks.
As it is, people seem to be happy to pump more and more electricity through their desktops and powered laptops until they are just a few watts short of tripping their circuit breaker. Just to write a letter.
What is this, preschool?
Only 10 cases have actually been reported, so this might just be a case of media hyping something, or it could be the end of the world with a generation of nerds doomed to sterility and crunchy crotches.
Well the article says 10 cases since 2004. In my estimation, that's easily tens of millions of users. You are more likely win the daily lottery in some states. And this can be avoided by not putting it on your lap for extended periods.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
I actually suffered from this. My laptop definitely got warm enough to grab my attention, but not so hot that I felt that it was burning. After a few weeks, I noticed a strange red splotchiness on my legs and it really was alarming at first. It's not like you pound yourself with a hammer and wonder why you have bruises, or burn yourself with an iron and wonder why you get blisters, it's much more subtle than that. After a day or so, I figured that it was the laptop and a couple of days of not using the laptop on my lap got rid of the symptoms.
So now, if it's going to be on my lap, I will sit cross-legged and rest only the edges on my legs, leaving an air-gap under most of the bottom.
Back around 2000 I had a Sony VAIO (never again). I had to call tech support for another reason, and while I was on the phone, complained that my new laptop got so hot that it burned my legs when I was wearing shorts.
The person's response was, "They're not laptops, sir. They are notebook computers." Evidently the manufacturers' response too their "laptops" getting to hot was to conveniently rename them.
www.clarke.ca
them "lap-tops"?
They're portable computers. You don't have to put them on your lap.
Who decided to call the device by the portion of the body that some people choose to (awkwardly) place it on?
Do people call babies "armtops"?
Watches "wristtops"?
Glasses "ear/nose-tops"?
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
Well I have a quite toasty laptop that has a desktop CPU (i7 960) three hard drives and 6 GB of RAM so it's interesting info to me. However I don't put it on my lap because to do so would block the three cooling fans. I use a laptop cooler between my lap and the machine.
Maybe people should start using these to protect their family jewels?
All this time I thought my neighbors cooked a shit-load of bacon every day. Speaking of which, I'm hungry...
Don't kid yourself. It's the size of the regexp AND how you use it that counts.
This is just another example of natural selection at work. Too stupid to take something hot off your lap? Get out of the gene pool!
Granted, this is like getting a sunburn or the canonical frog in the simmering pot. Sure, you'll get scorch marks the first time. But that's why we learn from our mistakes. Lacking that ability is reason enough to have your nards permanently roasted.
Have gnu, will travel.
and probably only by overprotective parents. For example, this happened to me, but I didn't go running to the doctor saying "Oh, no, the skin on my left thigh is reddish and it's worse when I use my laptop!" Instead, I had the good common sense to buy a $10 lap desk so my laptop wouldn't come into direct contact with my leg, and the redness went away on its own after a week or two. Also, I bet there are many other adults who come up with similar solutions if they notice this is a problem for themselves or their child, or don't have sensitive enough skin for it to be a problem, or live in climates where they're wearing jeans 90% of the time, or just don't care that they seem to have a permanent reddish area on their thigh(s)...
Only, unfortunately, my reproductive cells are stored too far inside and too far away from my thighs for this to cause sterility... oh, well, I can probably still sell them for enough to pay for my PhD.
My laptop definitely got warm enough to grab my attention...
I always thought we knew that heat on skin is bad. Whether are not you are in pain. Guess I was wrong all these years...
<sig> </sig>
...I've toasted my legs with my laptop. That's why I use a laptop desk (laptopdesk.net). I'm not schilling for them - just stating what I use. And in my defense, my laptop battery did bloat, which might have had something to do with it. And I've also noticed that my girlfriend's MacBook Pro dissipates heat a lot better than my MacBook.
Spekkio Master of War
Actually, fifty year old heating systems distributed heat more evenly than modern systems. Back in the '30s-'40s they had "gravity furnaces". There was no blower; convection distributed the heat, which was controlled by an electrical thermostat that varied the furnace's flame. If the power went out because an ice storm took down the electrical wires, you still had heat, because the furnace wasn't connected to the house's electricity. Its thermostat's electricity was generated by a walnut-sized doohickey called a "power pile" that generated electricity from the flame of the pilot light.
I had one in the old house I raised my kids in in the '90s. I loved it, it was way better tech than we have today. Especially when the power went out.
Yes, I've seen diagrams of the old systems that were available in the USA.
I think only rich people in the UK would have had these systems in their homes in the 1930s and 40s though.
My parents' parents' houses were exactly like the house featured in the 1900 House. Central heating would have been a dream for them. Their hot water came from a "back boiler" which was a cast iron thing installed into the back of one of the fireplaces. They had to be careful to open the taps if it got too hot as there was the danger of a steam explosion.
Heck, my Mother's childhood room still had a gas light in it.
Putting moderation advice in your
This may be obvious, but if your laptop is especially hot, you might want to open it up and clean out the fan, if you haven't done it for a while.
"However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results" - Winston Churchill
Who would notice?
If you have anything OLDER than an Intel i3, (ie. something between Pentium M and Core 2 duo) you can install Rmclock and lower the voltage of your laptop, so it makes less heat. You can no longer undervolt the newest laptops.
hence why it is a bit silly to put anything hotter than a 25w CPU into a laptop. I much prefer the low-voltage ones at 10w or less (quieter cooling fans and longer battery life also)
I don't think Balzac hangs out much of anywhere these days.
I suppose there might be some easy money in a lawsuit, but did you ever consider dealing with the issue yourself? I'm too cheap to buy a fancy plastic lap protector, so I use a paver block from my yard to protect my lap from the heat.
The cost of that cleanup, of course, will be borne by taxpayers, not industry.
http://thechive.com/2010/10/05/signs-that-are-so-wrong-they-must-be-right-27-photos/
Yes, the heat in my house and all the houses I have lived in (except for an apartment, which used radiators) work work "like air con". The heat and the AC come into my house via the same duct work. One house used a heat pump, the other used gas.
Another sticker in my laptop? No way!
http://thechive.files.wordpress.com/2010/10/chive-best-tues-21.jpg?w=500&h=488
The "don't run any programs or the thing will overheat and die" bug still exists in the latest MacBook Pro's. I have a couple month old one that's the bane of my existence at the moment. (I needed it to make sure some code was compatible with FCP.) That thing is always demanding to be rebooted for an update of some sort, it heats up like crazy and dies when you do anything processor intensive, and the UI has so little polish that KDE shines like a 1950's presidential motorcade by comparison.
After using it for a couple months I thought about how Apple designed printer paper might look like. 10" on each side, $10 a sheet, razor sharp edges, both sides covered in fingerprint preserving plastic. One side would carry a large warning about not putting it in a laser printer as it would melt and destroy the printer, while the other would be filled with warnings about avoiding paper-cuts.
Jobs would send a tweet about how all paper can give you a paper-cut.
nc
Check if you have speckled eggs. Use a mirror if you find comfort in food.
Winkey shortcut mapping for 64bit windows. WinKeyPlus