August 18, 2009

• Overheated Macbook Pro Odyssey

  Thanks for the comments, guys.

  Last week, I dropped by the Apple Store in Tyson's Corner to ask about the "heat" in my Macbook Pro (MBP) and they told me to make an appointment with the techs at the store. Of course, they were too busy for a walk in, so I went home and made the appointment online to meet a tech at the "Genius Bar."

  On Tuesday late afternoon, I went to my appointment to talk to one of these so-called geniuses. He asked me a few questions and checked a page that apparently recorded what exactly happened when my computer froze on me. He said that the report suggested that the CPU was "burning out" and that it might need to be replaced. He also wanted to run a diagnostic on the fans since that is probably the reason why the CPUs were burning up in the first place. But the fans were not in stock and if he needed to replace the fan, he wanted to do it all at onece so once they got the parts, they would contact me. The order probably went out the next day, Wednesday, and they got the part Thursday, and they promptly contact me. I went in on Friday to turn in my MBP and they told me that they'd work on it over the weekend. So far so good.

  On Saturday I got a call. Wow, that was fast, I thought. But the guy working on my computer ran a diagnostic and told me that he found nothing wrong with it. The CPU looked fine and the fans were working within normal parameters. (I knew all those years watching ST:TNG would come in handy.) He asked me what I run and I told him that I use Parallels and often burn DVDs which, of course, requires video conversions. These are, he said, jobs that require a lot a juice and so make the Intel CPUs work harder and hotter. It's unavoidable. But the Mac conked out on me, I protested. Are you saying that's unavoidable? I tried very hard not to sound like a whining college professor, but he seemed pretty adamant about his position, reminding me that MBPs are known to run "very warm."

  Okay, fine. I huff internally. I'll pick up my computer tomorrow.

  In the mean time, I decided to take things into my own hands and do some research. Now there is a lot of stuff out on the Internet and a lot of it is not very reliable, so I read and read, checked and confirmed what others had written, and came to one conclusion.

  Macs need to do work out some bugs in their operating system, hopefully when 10.6 comes out in a few months.

  In the meantime, I have figure out a way to keep my computer cool by patching together the different thoughts that different people have written on the Internet and trying some things on my own.

  1. I downloaded smcFan Control which provides my with a current reading of the heat of my fan. When the computer is working like a horse, temperatures surpasses 190 degrees F. Very hot. Like I said previously, you could fry an egg. Since I'm a nerd, I also downloaded the iStat widget which will load onto the Dashboard. It gives me all kinds of info including CPU temps, RAM usage and disk volumes, but most of it is incomprehensible to me, but it looks cool anyway.

  2. I then began to pay attention to the Activity Monitor when the computer ran hot--as many people mentioned in their Internet posts--and saw some things that freaked me out. My Brother printer was using over 40% of my CPU, even though I wasn't printing anything. I turned it off and the CPU usage went down as well as the core temperature. My printer usually goes into hibernation when I'm not printing or making copies, which is copacetic with Windows, but not with the Mac OS. I Googled around a bit and learned that the Mac often tries to communcate with USB hardware sometimes unnecessarily and raises the temperature. Oooooooh. So I also unplugged my external DVD player and disconnected my external hard drive, and temps went down rather dramatically.

  3. As I researched, I learned a little about kernal_tasks which also seemed to spike when I had these external devices plugged in. But I also learned that it also goes into action when other internal devices are turned on, such as the Mac firewall, Bluetooth and wireless connection Airport. I set the firewall to default settings and just turned off Bluetooth and Airport--which I kept on even though I am plugged in with ethernet.

  4. Finally, I also make sure that I quit any application I am not using.

  As a result, my Macbook Pro is at a cool 133 degrees. It used to be around 145 degrees even when I wasn't doing anything except type in MSWord and surf the Net. Now, the surface area around the speakers and keyboard isn't even warm. 

  Next project: I think my battery's dead. What is the lifespan of a computer battery? Does it go kaput if I keep the computer plugged in? Should I just disengage the battery so it won't keep recharging unecessarily? Any thoughts?

  • 12:09 AM
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