7 ms·

I am a Linux user, and I have wrecked laptops with it before. It is easy to overheat or otherwise abuse a laptop by having improper configs. For example, I had

by singlow 14y ago

I am a Linux user, and I have wrecked laptops with it before. It is easy to overheat or otherwise abuse a laptop by having improper configs. For example, I had a battery become unusable because Linux often failed to sleep when the lid was closed because some dialog box was blocking. It would run in the bag with no ventilation when I didn't realize it until the battery drained and it would fail to shutdown until the hardware fail-safes took over and I realized my backpack was too hot to hold. Did this a few times and the last time, the battery wouldn't charge anymore. After getting a new battery I became very conscientious about whether it actually was asleep before I put it in the bag. I have had this happen in Windows before as well, in one case it would wake up if I forgot to turn off my Bluetooth mouse when I put it away. Since it was already closed, there was no trigger to go back to sleep so it would run itself dead in the bag and eventually the plastic near a hot component melted. Turns out there is an option in the Windows device manager to tell it not to wake on Bluetooth that prevents this. However a defect in the factory-installed operating system that causes failure is something you have to warranty. A defect in the user-installed operating system is not. However, I have no idea how they could trace the problem to the operating system. Not sure how they would ever know that Linux is installed. Any good Linux user would wipe the hard disk before returning a computer to the manufacturer for repair :)

jeremyarussell 14y ago
I've seen that happen with windows as well. Opened program wants to close, but needs to save or some such, laptop overheats. Sometimes it's just a lesson learned, I wouldn't say it was Linux that wrecked the laptops though. I do find it interesting that newegg isn't using a CD loaded testing suite anyways, using windows PE or a DOS based environment. (like Eurosoft's PC-Check software.) There's also the fact that it should take about, ten to fifteen minutes just to slip the hard drive out, hook it to an imaging workstation, and image the default OS over to it. (My imaging station takes 5 - 10 minutes). To the best of my understanding it's pretty much assumed that when you send stuff in you are waiving your right to have the same data sent back anyways.
reddit_clone 14y ago
I have had this happen when I was running a XP mode virtual machine in a Windows 7 laptop. The Virtual Machine prevented the main OS from going to sleep. It was surprising my backpack didn't catch on fire.
slurgfest 14y ago
I am a Linux user for years now, and I have never even come close to wrecking anything with it with 'improper configs' or otherwise, on a laptop or desktop. The problem you describe is not a matter of an 'improper config' wrecking a laptop due to the awful user-unfriendliness of Linux. It is a matter of you messing with something you didn't understand, jamming the machine in a bag to overheat, and then having to replace the battery. There does not exist an operating system which is impervious to this kind of nonsense.
- j_jochem 14y ago
  I recently discovered that bad software can really cause hardware to fail. I switched from using the proprietary AMD fglrx drivers to the open source radeon driver a few years back. For some time, my notebook has been running pretty hot after being powered on for a few hours, even when idle. I always put this down to a dust-blocked heat sink. When the problem persisted after cleaning out the fan and heatsink and replacing the thermal grease, I started to research other causes. Turns out that clock gating, a technique that clocks down the gpu when it is idle in order to save power and reduce heat output, is disabled by default in the open source radeon driver [1]. However, I discovered this too late - the constant overheating has already seems to have damaged the gpu to the point where random color artifacts appear on the screen and the system will freeze after being powered on for a few hours. So as it turns out, Linux may really be bad for your hardware. Still, there's no way I'm going to stick with Windows on my new notebook. [1] https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/ATI#Powersaving https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/ATI#Powersaving
  - josephkern 14y ago
    Linux is not bad for your hardware, misconfiguration is bad for your hardware. Annecdotally, heavy graphic card use on any laptop (yes even running windows) will cause a heat death in a shorter ammuont of time than normally expected.
    - PakG1 14y ago
      No, in this case, Linux really is bad for your hardware. Reading gp's wiki link, it would seem the feature to clock down the GPU is disabled by default because it's still a work in progress. That would mean that although it works in a lot of cases, it's not yet truly dependable. And if it's not yet truly dependable, then it's not able to dependably care for the hardware in the best way possible. And as such, Linux can be bad for your hardware, though it isn't always. Any rebuttal you might throw at this reality would make me to look at you more and more like this. :) http://xkcd.com/644/ http://xkcd.com/644/
ChuckMcM 14y ago
This is an important point. It used to be that there really wasn't a whole lot of damage you could do to a machine with software, sure there was the 'set the monitor horizontal refresh to zero and burn up the flyback transistor' but that was about it. These days however, in an age of tightly managing clock speeds, heat, voltages, etc all under BIOS/driver control to maximize battery life, it is possible to not only damage but to completely brick a machine if it has either broken or malicious software running in 'ring 0'. And that puts people like NewEgg in a tight spot, having already to deal pretty evil stuff [1]. Then if you combine that with there is no way to 'restore' a laptop to its original OS install if you've re-partitioned and overwritten the 'recovery partition' on the hard drive. Nobody bothers to send recovery CDs any more, that is $3.85 in plastic they can't (or won't) put into the box. So now if you install Linux you've made it effectively impossible for the vendor to even attempt to start from a 'known good OS' and determine suitability. It does kinda suck. That said, I prefer Amazon's policy as well and as more folks move there NewEgg will either adapt or die. [1] Evil doer activity (documented) - get some bad memory (generally for free from some scrap pile, 'buy' a laptop, take its good memory out, put dead memory in, 'return' the laptop. Sad really. All the engineering effort that goes into thwarting the petty schemes of evil people.
- nitid_name 14y ago
  Am I the only person that images my manufacturer's HDD when I first get a new box? I thought that would be fairly standard operating procedure for any geek who wants to avoid this sort of crap.
  - RyJones 14y ago
    Or pull the original HDD and replace it with a nice SSD. Should something happen, pop in the original HDD and away you go.
    - dr42 14y ago
      "away you go" sans all your data.
rb2k_ 14y ago
Something that also happens often is that Linux has problems sending the hard drive to sleep properly and you end up with a "I'll stop and start it 3 times a minute" scenario which is able to wreck a HDD pretty quickly compared to normal usage
LinXitoW 14y ago
She should contact Lenovo directly. I've fried my Lenovo T61 with overclocking and they still repaired it immediately. Additionally, they expressly stated to REMOVE THE HDD. This is obviously a cop out by Newegg, since any technician worth his salt could just run hardware diagnostics on it. According to the buyer, she did that AND booted a normal Windows and the errors persisted. Didn't we just have an article about how great Amazons UX is? Well, i guess this is the Newegg version of that, just inverted.
- wonderyak 14y ago
  For every warranty repair I've ever done with a manufacturer they have asked for the HDD to be removed before sending the unit in. As a retailer, or maybe even just a drop shipper in some cases, I just don't see NewEgg doing anything other than replacements. I certainly wouldn't expect, nor trust, Amazon to do this.
wissler 14y ago
Is it really that hard to engineer in hardware or bios-based failsafes? It seems like bad design to leave basic hardware safety issues to the OS.
raphman 14y ago
Shouldn't it be the firmware's responsibility to prevent overcharging, overclocking, overheating, etc. - unless explicitly overridden?
- __david__ 14y ago
  Yes it should. Blaming the OS is like blaming a userspace program for a kernel panic.
  - tedunangst 14y ago
    In the brave new world of ACPI, the OS tells the firmware "I'll take care of that, trust me, I know what I'm doing". Your computer starts with fans at full speed for this reason, but once the OS assumes control, it's in control.
ams6110 14y ago
A bit of a tangent but this is one of the top reasons I buy Apple laptops. Sleep/Wake is pretty much flawless. I occasionally had some hangs on wake back in Tiger or earlier versions of Mac OS, but never with Leopard or later.
- esbwhat 14y ago
  Weird, because every now and again my Macbook will just die after waking up. I also find that while initially it was really fast and worked great, it's now really slow and takes up to 10 seconds, while my linux laptop (which doesn't even have an SSD) wakes up pretty much instantly
  - CountSessine 14y ago
    Is there anything suspicious in the system log? I'm guessing that you might have a kext (like for VMWare Fusion of VirtualBox) that's misbehaving when waking up.
- dman 14y ago
  My apps crash frequently after I wake up on Lion.
- noonespecial 14y ago
  Both me and my father have had "sleep" incidents with our macbooks where the computer ran at full blast with the lid closed in our bags until they were too hot to touch. I'm on Lion now and I still occasionally have this problem. Apples are not immune, but I agree that they are the best at sleep and wake I've had so far.
  - shellox 14y ago
    Happens to me all the time. I also have often the problem with a black screen after sleep :/
- revolutions 14y ago
  Some of the newer PCs aren't too bad with this. My desktop sucks with sleep, but the two laptops I use are pretty flawless (though one's battery is terrible). I haven't shut one down in 3 weeks, and the other in a week. They're pretty standard, too; the good battery life one was around $600. Haven't used a Macbook, though, so can't compare.
naner 14y ago
I'm also a long-time Linux user and while I have seen Linux destroy hardware (X11 was misconfigured and fried an LCD back in the day), it is certainly not common and pretty difficult to do these days. I don't think the risk is high enough to justify voiding the hardware warranties completely.

by singlow 14y ago

jeremyarussell 14y ago

I've seen that happen with windows as well. Opened program wants to close, but needs to save or some such, laptop overheats. Sometimes it's just a lesson learned, I wouldn't say it was Linux that wrecked the laptops though. I do find it interesting that newegg isn't using a CD loaded testing suite anyways, using windows PE or a DOS based environment. (like Eurosoft's PC-Check software.) There's also the fact that it should take about, ten to fifteen minutes just to slip the hard drive out, hook it to an imaging workstation, and image the default OS over to it. (My imaging station takes 5 - 10 minutes). To the best of my understanding it's pretty much assumed that when you send stuff in you are waiving your right to have the same data sent back anyways.

reddit_clone 14y ago

I have had this happen when I was running a XP mode virtual machine in a Windows 7 laptop. The Virtual Machine prevented the main OS from going to sleep. It was surprising my backpack didn't catch on fire.

slurgfest 14y ago

I am a Linux user for years now, and I have never even come close to wrecking anything with it with 'improper configs' or otherwise, on a laptop or desktop. The problem you describe is not a matter of an 'improper config' wrecking a laptop due to the awful user-unfriendliness of Linux. It is a matter of you messing with something you didn't understand, jamming the machine in a bag to overheat, and then having to replace the battery. There does not exist an operating system which is impervious to this kind of nonsense.

j_jochem 14y ago
I recently discovered that bad software can really cause hardware to fail. I switched from using the proprietary AMD fglrx drivers to the open source radeon driver a few years back. For some time, my notebook has been running pretty hot after being powered on for a few hours, even when idle. I always put this down to a dust-blocked heat sink. When the problem persisted after cleaning out the fan and heatsink and replacing the thermal grease, I started to research other causes. Turns out that clock gating, a technique that clocks down the gpu when it is idle in order to save power and reduce heat output, is disabled by default in the open source radeon driver [1]. However, I discovered this too late - the constant overheating has already seems to have damaged the gpu to the point where random color artifacts appear on the screen and the system will freeze after being powered on for a few hours. So as it turns out, Linux may really be bad for your hardware. Still, there's no way I'm going to stick with Windows on my new notebook. [1] https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/ATI#Powersaving https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/ATI#Powersaving
- josephkern 14y ago
  Linux is not bad for your hardware, misconfiguration is bad for your hardware. Annecdotally, heavy graphic card use on any laptop (yes even running windows) will cause a heat death in a shorter ammuont of time than normally expected.
  - PakG1 14y ago
    No, in this case, Linux really is bad for your hardware. Reading gp's wiki link, it would seem the feature to clock down the GPU is disabled by default because it's still a work in progress. That would mean that although it works in a lot of cases, it's not yet truly dependable. And if it's not yet truly dependable, then it's not able to dependably care for the hardware in the best way possible. And as such, Linux can be bad for your hardware, though it isn't always. Any rebuttal you might throw at this reality would make me to look at you more and more like this. :) http://xkcd.com/644/ http://xkcd.com/644/

ChuckMcM 14y ago

This is an important point. It used to be that there really wasn't a whole lot of damage you could do to a machine with software, sure there was the 'set the monitor horizontal refresh to zero and burn up the flyback transistor' but that was about it. These days however, in an age of tightly managing clock speeds, heat, voltages, etc all under BIOS/driver control to maximize battery life, it is possible to not only damage but to completely brick a machine if it has either broken or malicious software running in 'ring 0'. And that puts people like NewEgg in a tight spot, having already to deal pretty evil stuff [1]. Then if you combine that with there is no way to 'restore' a laptop to its original OS install if you've re-partitioned and overwritten the 'recovery partition' on the hard drive. Nobody bothers to send recovery CDs any more, that is $3.85 in plastic they can't (or won't) put into the box. So now if you install Linux you've made it effectively impossible for the vendor to even attempt to start from a 'known good OS' and determine suitability. It does kinda suck. That said, I prefer Amazon's policy as well and as more folks move there NewEgg will either adapt or die. [1] Evil doer activity (documented) - get some bad memory (generally for free from some scrap pile, 'buy' a laptop, take its good memory out, put dead memory in, 'return' the laptop. Sad really. All the engineering effort that goes into thwarting the petty schemes of evil people.

nitid_name 14y ago
Am I the only person that images my manufacturer's HDD when I first get a new box? I thought that would be fairly standard operating procedure for any geek who wants to avoid this sort of crap.
- RyJones 14y ago
  Or pull the original HDD and replace it with a nice SSD. Should something happen, pop in the original HDD and away you go.
  - dr42 14y ago
    "away you go" sans all your data.

rb2k_ 14y ago

Something that also happens often is that Linux has problems sending the hard drive to sleep properly and you end up with a "I'll stop and start it 3 times a minute" scenario which is able to wreck a HDD pretty quickly compared to normal usage

LinXitoW 14y ago

She should contact Lenovo directly. I've fried my Lenovo T61 with overclocking and they still repaired it immediately. Additionally, they expressly stated to REMOVE THE HDD. This is obviously a cop out by Newegg, since any technician worth his salt could just run hardware diagnostics on it. According to the buyer, she did that AND booted a normal Windows and the errors persisted. Didn't we just have an article about how great Amazons UX is? Well, i guess this is the Newegg version of that, just inverted.

wonderyak 14y ago
For every warranty repair I've ever done with a manufacturer they have asked for the HDD to be removed before sending the unit in. As a retailer, or maybe even just a drop shipper in some cases, I just don't see NewEgg doing anything other than replacements. I certainly wouldn't expect, nor trust, Amazon to do this.

wissler 14y ago

Is it really that hard to engineer in hardware or bios-based failsafes? It seems like bad design to leave basic hardware safety issues to the OS.

raphman 14y ago

Shouldn't it be the firmware's responsibility to prevent overcharging, overclocking, overheating, etc. - unless explicitly overridden?

__david__ 14y ago
Yes it should. Blaming the OS is like blaming a userspace program for a kernel panic.
- tedunangst 14y ago
  In the brave new world of ACPI, the OS tells the firmware "I'll take care of that, trust me, I know what I'm doing". Your computer starts with fans at full speed for this reason, but once the OS assumes control, it's in control.

ams6110 14y ago

A bit of a tangent but this is one of the top reasons I buy Apple laptops. Sleep/Wake is pretty much flawless. I occasionally had some hangs on wake back in Tiger or earlier versions of Mac OS, but never with Leopard or later.

esbwhat 14y ago
Weird, because every now and again my Macbook will just die after waking up. I also find that while initially it was really fast and worked great, it's now really slow and takes up to 10 seconds, while my linux laptop (which doesn't even have an SSD) wakes up pretty much instantly
- CountSessine 14y ago
  Is there anything suspicious in the system log? I'm guessing that you might have a kext (like for VMWare Fusion of VirtualBox) that's misbehaving when waking up.
dman 14y ago
My apps crash frequently after I wake up on Lion.
noonespecial 14y ago
Both me and my father have had "sleep" incidents with our macbooks where the computer ran at full blast with the lid closed in our bags until they were too hot to touch. I'm on Lion now and I still occasionally have this problem. Apples are not immune, but I agree that they are the best at sleep and wake I've had so far.
- shellox 14y ago
  Happens to me all the time. I also have often the problem with a black screen after sleep :/
revolutions 14y ago
Some of the newer PCs aren't too bad with this. My desktop sucks with sleep, but the two laptops I use are pretty flawless (though one's battery is terrible). I haven't shut one down in 3 weeks, and the other in a week. They're pretty standard, too; the good battery life one was around $600. Haven't used a Macbook, though, so can't compare.

naner 14y ago

I'm also a long-time Linux user and while I have seen Linux destroy hardware (X11 was misconfigured and fried an LCD back in the day), it is certainly not common and pretty difficult to do these days. I don't think the risk is high enough to justify voiding the hardware warranties completely.