When Hot Is Not

People (read PC users) often lament what is missing from the Mac.

“They’re not very expandable are they?”
“No Publisher?”
“Where are the built in media card readers?”
“What do you mean there’s no huge, ugly button to launch email?”
“How do I turn up the volume without a knob the size of a dinner plate?”

Some of the claims are fair enough - but for the most part it boils down to a design philosophy from Apple; they have made a choice to NOT put card readers and volume knobs on their computers. It keeps with the Zen-like “less-is-more” idea that we see time and time again from Apple; no card readers in the computers, no FM tuners in the music players, no extra buttons and knobs to launch and control applications.

However, all computer manufacturers would do well to leave at least two things off every machine that they make; heat and noise.

I do a lot of work around servers and two things that you notice in rooms with lots machines running at full speed is that they make a lot of noise and give off quite a bit of heat.

That’s okay sometimes, such as when you can close the door on a purpose built room and leave the noise and heat behind, but in a home environment it can get to be a problem.

Right now there is an Acer laptop not 4 meters from me and every minute or so, the fan cranks up to a level that is distracting. No one is using it, it’s just sitting there booted up from a live Linux CD. It’s not like it’s summer here - and yet the idling computer needs to cool itself down.

As I type this on our iBook, I know that there is a fan inside of it, but I cannot hear it and I have to wonder, how come the difference?

Some Macs (Indigo iMacs for example) didn’t have fans and all you heard was the whirring of the hard drive. But as things have moved on, the demands on processors has increased, as has their performance which in turn means that they run hotter, which means that they need to be cooled by fans; more heat and more noise.

I notice this particularly on PCs. To my ears they generate more noise than Macs, which isn’t surprising - PCs usually have more fans and the cases that contain them are typically thin metal boxes with little sound insulation.

Some people don’t notice this sort of ambient noise and could work undistracted while a hair dryer was running at full speed on the desk next to them. On the other hand, I personally know someone that purchased a 10 meter KVM (keyboard, video and mouse) cable for his PC and stuck the CPU in a cupboard so that he could work in his bedroom without the noise.

What we were told in the past was that the PPC chip was much more efficient than its counterpart in the PC world. It ran cooler, did more calculations per second and kept its elbows off the table when it went out to dinner.

But what’s the story now that the Intel Macs are coming out?

I don’t own a Macintel but I’ve used them and I can’t notice any significant difference in fan noise, so that’s a good sign. In fact I could go so far as to say that the Intel iMacs that I have used seem to run quieter than my PPC equivalent.

It’s been said by a few commentators that the next race in the computer industry is the power per watt race. There is a limit to how fast current design can take chip speeds, and when that limit is reached power per watt will be the next thing. In other words—who can deliver a chip with the best performance using the least power? If you’re into fast vehicles, the closest thing is probably power to weight ratio.

It may not make much difference to you at home, but think of the savings that Yahoo! and Google would make by using more efficient processors. Then think of that on a global scale or borrow from Bob Cringely to see where that might lead.

I have often thought of PC users as hot-rodders. Some of them love to customise their machines and really make them perform. There are entire web sites devoted to such things and in fact there’s an entire industry built around keeping PCs running fast, quiet and cool.

Personally, I’m happy to sacrifice speed for peace and quiet. Others aren’t. The trick is to find that sweet spot.