On Tue, 2004-11-30 at 10:35, Mark Secker wrote: > >One other question - my old Compaq (m700 piii) used to get quite warm and > >I'd have to put a book/table on my lap as it got quite uncomfortable - has > >anyone out there had any experiences with heat and the new G4 laptops? I > >don't feel like wearing my asbestos trousers just to use a laptop. > > nature of the beast I'm afraid.. modern processors get hot my > Powerbook is not intolerably hot but I tend not to use my laptop > on my lap anyway
I can't really agree there. I've used a number of laptops that run comfortably warm, but not even hot. In fact, my Toshiba is one of them. Many of the Pentium M laptops are also pretty comfortable, and IIRC the iBook G3s used to run pretty cool as well. I would argue that it's more a matter of people buying faster machines without considering issues such as weight and comfort as much as they perhaps should. A good example of this is people buying laptops with desktop Pentium 4s in them. Thankfully, Apple appears to be smarter than to try to put a low-end G5 in a laptop at their current heat dissipation levels. I find the most important thing is the ability to control your laptop's power management manually. For example, I can tell my Toshiba to run at the lower CPU speed even on AC power, and to run the fan constantly even when on battery. Windows would never let you have that much control, of course, but ... well, it's not running Windows anymore. As someone eyeing an iBook as a possible replacement for a dying laptop, I'd be interested to know how much control over this stuff OS/X gives you. -- Craig Ringer
