Smoking Venue And Hoster
 

Do you use your windows based computer and Hoster in a club or venue that has smoking? Just recently Apple computers announced they will not be honoring warranties of their computers if you even smoke in the privacy of your own home. I bet other window based computer companies will follow. Do you think smoke filled karaoke venues has any effect on the way your computer and Hoster operate? Do you think the announcement by "Apple" has any merit to it? Will you change your setup in any way? What say you?

yes i know Hoster is only a Window based product. But i'm sure other companies will follow Apple's example.

http://consumerist.com/2009/11/smoki...-warranty.html

My computer I use for shows has clear see through sides. I have not noticed any build-up from smoke (usually in the form af tar goo sticking to components. We have used this computer for about 3 years now and with the exception of an occasional blowing out of the dust around the fans and processor no other cleaning has been needed.
My KJ (wife) doesn't smoke so no one is smoking directly around the computer and the audience sits back a ways. This along with the filter fans the VFW has may be contributing to not having much smoke around the equipment which I am sure does help. I have a feeling laptops would be more effected than desktop models since the components are in a much smaller space.

Mine is in a club 7 nights (and days) that is smoking. I blow out the inside every couple months, but never had any problems otherwise, however mine was custom built from scratch so not a manu issue - unless the manus of the individual components start to follow suit as well.

I am a little stunned. There is a whole range of environments that are more harmful to computers than cigarette smoke. Are manufacturers going to void warrantees in all those environments as well?

Probably not.

No worry here. Every public building in Maine is smoke free, can't even smoke outside the door or on the grounds or sidewalk any more. Have to go out across the street to smoke.:)

I've used the same computers in smokey bars 5-7 nights a week for 5+ years and have never had any problems. I vacume the computers a couple times a years for dust and have never noticed any residue. I do however see some discoloration around the outside of the case around the air intake vents. The only thing I would worry about is a build up of goo on the laser lens of the cdroms but my cdroms are still working great after 5+ years.

A number of years ago I had 2 karaoke players start having problems reading cdg's after the bar used a fog machine one night for halloween. Although only anecdotal evidence I don't let the bars use fog machines around my computers. I think the fog machine juice and nicotine build up are similiar things but the fog machines pump it out on a much larger scale (pure speculation).

Sam

I use a MAC for Hoster
 

Hi Musicman. Just got a MacBook Pro and am using Hoster on it via BootCamp to startup in Windows 7. Now I have the best of both worlds. It works fine. As far as smoking voiding warranty..good news. People look after their cars and computers better than they look after themselves, so maybe Apple are helping covertly in helping smokers give up.:w

Aw cmon, gimme a break?:) As if ppl in that bar are gonna quit because they think THEY might be hurting your computer.

I never really thought about it before. But i use one of those laptop cooling boards with dual fans to keep my laptop cool. Actually i guess those fans suck the nasty air in and blow it right into the inner workings of my laptop. Coating my motherboard, connections, and the laser eye of my CD rom drive with cigarette smoke and nasty french fry gease. As well as my mtu external drive, it to has it's own cooling fan sucking in the nasties to :e... yuck. I sure wish michigan would go smokeless. We are behind the rest of the country in that regards. We have the highest unemployment rate in the nation. So we need the tabacco tax. We just raised the tax again, almost 3 bucks of every pack is for tax. A bag of roll yur own tabaccie, is up above $50.00 a pound. A pound of pipe tabacci is close to $30.00 a pound. I use to smoke 3 packs of cigarettes a day before i gave it up cold turkey back around 1990..:e

Dust Mite are more harmful than smoke !

Musicman51, if you look at the design of the cooling board, it is actually blowing air along the bottom (outside) of the case to disipate heat from there and not actually blowing air directly into the laptop.
I can see if a computer is in a small room with someone directly around the computer how smoke would eventually build up enough to cause a problem, but in a much larger room such as a bar or restuarant I don't see this as a problem for it.
Texas is another of those states who have not adopted a statewide smoking ban, though most of the major cities have. So we deal with it too. However, as a smoker and one who has smoked around his computers since home computers became available, I have never seen any kind of tar build up on any of them except on the outside. Unless you had your cigarette directly in front of the air intake it would be very hard for the tar to travel inside of the computer.

Thanks dale i do feel better knowing that... these computers and related gear are expensive. :)

I suppose the next thing we will see marketed is a filter to fit to the air intake on laptops.
Here in the UK smoking is banned in any public places so unless you smoke yourself at home should not present any problems.
More of a worry would be someone spilling their drink over your computer.:e

Roy.

Mine blows away from the openings, so as to create a negative pressure so the warm air inside can be replaced by the "clean"(room) air. Either way it is done having inside air (warm) needing to be replaced with outside air (cooler) to have any cooling effect, but in a smoke-filled room the outside air is "filled" with smoke and is drawn through over and over. (the number of air changes is one factor that determines the cooling rate).

I'm also pretty sure that most companies that manufacture products that are highly competitive (such as computers and laptops) that Apple, Inc. has taken hundreds (if not thousands) of well documented quality control tests in controlled environments that led them to make their decision about the warantee coverage.

sorry to say that i do smoke and i smoke when i'm working around my laptops/pc's ( in the garage) and i havent had any problems with it, i just got done upgrading the hhd. memory and replacing the nickel cell battery on my friends old pc( Dell Dimension 4600) and she doesn't smoke, but her pc has more dust in and around it , even her keyboard has built up ( dust, hair etc. ) i had to use my air compressor to get rid of all the dust ,so i don't think smoking will harm computers...

Maybe not, but I can't say for sure as I wasn't taking part in the quality control tests at the factory either.

Most likely, Apple had many computers in a controlled environment compared to many computers in a "smoking" environment, and a certain percentage of those even in the controlled environment still failed or problems arose before their standard warrantee guideline time. A slightly higher percentage than expected either had problems or failed in the smoking environment. Also, before the test began, a set of criteria was most likely established ( a cut-off percentage of failures) to determine if there was a significant difference in the two environments. If a statistical difference was shown to be 95% likely (this involves complex engineering statistics), then their original hypothesis is considered valid, and they felt that action be taken based on that.

I know, I sound like a know it all, but I did this kind of work in a manufacturing company a few years back.:)

and also most of the places where i play or used to play, smoking is not allowed anyway, unless you're serving a small percentage of food, the only thing i'm worried about is people spilling drinks on my laptops,

I kinda took the message as maybe people would quit smoking to avoid harming their OWN computer, such as voiding the warrenty on their personal computers at home. At least, that is how i read the post. I believe this is the point intended of the post.
muzicman144:):):):)

I don't think Apple is saying that the smoke causes the computer to fail, but that it is hazardous to their technicians. As one person pointed out OSHa put it on the same list with isopropal alchohol and a comple ofther cleaning fluids. This is why Aplle will not make their technicians work on those computers.