[Debian-eeepc-devel] Running Eee with lid closed considered harmful?

[Alan Jenkins]

On 4/21/09, Ben Armstrong <synrg at sanctuary.nslug.ns.ca> wrote:
> On Tue, 21 Apr 2009 12:28:55 +0200
> Santi Béjar <santi at agolina.net> wrote:
>> It has been discussed in the past. The main issue is that the Eee uses
>> the keyboard to cool the machine, so the only sane/safe thing to do is
>> to suspend.
>>
>> You can always, at your own risk, modify the action in
>> /etc/acpi/actions/lid.sh.
>
> I think the risks may be somewhat overstated, so we need to be clearer
> on this point.  Please supply evidence that this is harmful.  My
> experience with the model 4G is that it is safe to leave the lid closed
> along as you apply some common sense.
>
> My Eee is now nearly a year and a half old.  In that time, I have more
> than once accidentally left the lid closed with the system running
> *and* left it in that state in my not-well-ventilated bag.  Upon
> discovering this hours later, the temperature was reported to be around
> 68C.  There is no evidence that the system sustained any damage from
> these events.  Granted, this is only one data point, so you can't draw
> any general conclusions from it.  However, it suggests that if you
> exercise some prudence (i.e. don't leave it running with the lid
> closed and run something CPU-intensive and/or block the vent) there
> should be no problem running it with the lid closed, even for extended
> periods of time.
>

+1.  I've done the same thing, and the machine was uncomfortably hot
to the touch, but undamaged.  I agree that it gets hot if you just
close it and walk away, but that's something you have to learn.  I
learnt this quickly because it's _uncomfortable_ when it gets hot,
even just typing on a desk.  If you have to deliberately choose to
disable "suspend on lid close", I don't see the problem.  It's really
not a "let me kill my hardware" setting.  It's "don't kill my user
experience because I might sometimes forget and slightly reduce the
lifetime of my hardware".

I can see arguments for preserving the default.  If someone installs
debian to replace Xandros, it's nice to have the same default
behaviour, especially when there are trade-offs like this.

But I'm unhappy with suspending it automatically because of the way I
use it.  I drag it around with me at home, and I obviously close the
lid while carrying it.  Having to press the power button, wait a few
seconds for resume, and possibly recover broken network connections
detracts significantly from the experience.  Am I that unusual?


At least for the original EEE, the power consumption in suspend is
unfortunately high.  My solution is to hibernate if I'm going to throw
it in a bag, so I'm free to forget about it for the day.