HACKER Q&A
📣 amichail

Why don't buildings have dry warm up rooms for your laptop in winter?


In winter, a laptop can get cold enough during a long walk or commute that it picks up moisture as soon as you enter a warm building. Powering on a damp laptop can cause damage, so a simple solution came to mind.

Public buildings like malls or libraries could offer a small dry warm up room where people take their cold laptops for ten to twenty minutes. The room would be warm with low humidity so the device can reach indoor temperature without collecting moisture.

Would you use these dry warm up rooms to protect your laptop from water damage during winter?


  👤 tlb Accepted Answer ✓
Laptops are pretty rugged, but with more sensitive stuff like prototypes or test equipment, the easy solution is to put it in a plastic ziploc bag while it's warming up.

👤 duxup
Are you sure this is a problem?

Have you encountered / measured it?


👤 stevenalowe
First World Problem

👤 bigyabai
I don't know why you keep misusing Ask HN to present us completely disingenuous questions. Do you actually need someone to explain to you why this doesn't exist, or are you trying to leverage this website to validate your own, extremely specific pet peeve?

👤 b0o
Just leave the laptop on during winter??

The surrounding cold winds would reduce or negate any potential harm from leaving the laptop on and it wouldn't be cold enough to hurt a laptop in a sleeve/cover.

Also, this would also affect electronics transitioning from a cool/dry room to a hot/humid outside area. Such as going from cold hotel room overnight to the blazing hot outside in asia in the summer.


👤 chiefalchemist
Get a hard case. Rip out the foam and replace it with something more insulation-y. Now you have a cooler, a cooler that’ll keep the cold out instead of in.