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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.
"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!
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.
Free Martian Whores!
Yeah, my first gen Macbook Pro, aka Bruce Cockburn, was pretty bad too. The generation after that is also unusable as a laptop. Add to that the constant high pitched whining sound and random kernel panics Apple never acknowledged (but which went away with a software update a year later), and I've seen enough that I'll never buy Apple hardware again. They don't care if it works as long as it looks pretty.
However if there are issues simply from extended periods of being nicely toasty, that definitely isn't good
No, it isn't. And it doesn't even have to be "toasty" -- shortly after acquiring my 2006 Macbook Pro, I developed a case of Tinia cruris that defied treatment with Desenex and Tinactin.
You can see where this is going. It took a trip to the doctor's office and the question to be posed, "did you recently acquire a laptop computer?" before I realized the association.
Yes, Macbooks cause crotch rot. Swamp nuts. Rack rash. The itch. Taint thrush.
Laptop users, take my advice, and go buy a paperstone cutting board. Works great, weighs little, and fits in your laptop bag.
I can see the fnords!
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.