We recently had a heatwave in the UK, and I think this was even experienced throughout the world. Even before that, one of my team member’s laptop battery bulged up due to excessive heat, which he noticed due to the raised keyboard. He ended up getting a brand new company laptop.
During the heatwave, another team member went into the office where it would be nice and cool, but I guess there’s a good chance it happened in transit (in his hot car) – he also noticed the raised keyboard, and so quickly disconnected the battery before it had a chance to explode.
“My new laptop is flipping awesome. I’m so happy we had this heatwave”
Colleague
I assume our IT department must have got many requests for new laptops, and then they sent out this very debatable advice.
"Your laptop may be struggling because it has to work harder to keep itself cool. Here are some tips to help get the best performance from the laptop until things cool down.
- Move to the coolest part of your home, or work in one of our air-conditioned offices.
- Run updates and give your computer a reboot
- Limit the apps running to those you need
- In Microsoft Teams, turn off incoming video (this allows you to share your camera but reduce the impact on your laptop’s display)”
So for point number 1, my first team member works in his conservatory. I normally associate conservatories with being cold but we often compare temperatures and his room is usually 6-8 degrees celsius warmer than my living room where I work. We are in those rooms because it’s the only space we have available for a desk and monitors. It’s not exactly easy to just “Move to the coolest part of your home”. I suppose you could try working on your laptop with no external monitors, but the advice should be just “to take the day off”. They also say to come into the office, but then the second colleague’s laptop battery presumably broke on the way there.
Point number 2: other than the rare circumstance that software is causing extra work for the processor (and they have fixed the issue in a new software update), running software updates probably isn’t going to make a difference. Maybe the update process will cause your laptop to run hotter whilst download/installing. Or what if the new update has a bug that causes extra processor issues?
Point number 3: That’s just good advice in general isn’t it? Don’t load up loads of programs when you don’t want them.
Point number 4: I found this a bit weird. If everyone turned off incoming feeds, then no one is watching the video feeds. Why not just say “do not use your webcams”?
Even Valve and Nintendo were putting out advice for their Steam Deck, and Switch. Those small devices just aren’t good in the heat.
Stranger Coding Tings 