Laptop Safety

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A friend just told me abut someone here in the Philippines that had a laptop computer sitting on a bed, it overheated and caught fire, resulting in a child’s death.

Often my wife will get the laptop out and place it on the bed to work. I immediately tell her she needs something flat under it so the fan can cool the processor chip. Then I go find a large book or something and slide it under the laptop to lift it off the soft bed.

What is happening to most laptops is the fan air inlet is located on the bottom of the laptop so if you set it on a bed the air cannot flow resulting in overheating. Normally the laptop will shut down at some point before it goes critical and bursts into flames, however that does not always work correctly and fires do happen. There are laptop bed tables you can buy for under Php 1,000 at computer stores which work great or just use a large book.

Another thing to consider is when a laptop is running hot the processor begins to slow down to attempt to cool down meaning you have to wait longer to get any work done.

About Charles Haramn – One of my jobs when I was still working was as a computer room manager, but I had a second job which was to take care of about 800 peoples computers in the same office. I got to fix a lot of different types of computer problems with software and the hardware. I had a chance to work on the first IBM PC back in 1981, so I have been around personal computers since day one. My other work was on the IBM AS/400 mid range systems however some of these computer rooms were huge. I took care of the companies computer equipment for 12 years. I also did some consulting work and often was sub contracted to IBM to do some of their system upgrades, most of this was in the Dallas Texas area. I really enjoyed all the computer related work I did all those years.

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The First IBM PC 1981

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IBM AS/400 Mid Range Business Computer Quad Processors in many of them, huge dasdy (disk drives).

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