The Steel Guitar Forum

Just recently Apple computers announced you can not smoke in the privacy of your own home while using your new apple computer. This will void your warranty, and they will refuse to honor it under any circumstances. Any merit to their announcement? If you smoke, will you think twice about purchasing a new apple? your thoughts?

http://consumerist.com/2009/11/smoking- ... ranty.html

I read that page but I didn't see anything about an official announcement, just the decisions of some store managers. I know guys who work at Apple stores who do work on smokers' computers, and I know because they complain about it

That's the problem with Apple, they are extremely secretive even when it comes to people demanding answers to questions like this. I know that if I regularly smoked near my computer I'd probably steer clear of Macs until I got my answer.

That said, it is not smart to smoke near a computer as the fans are usually intake fans and between that and the static they basically act like expensive air filters. Not fun to clean up.

I spent an hour reading that a few days ago. At first I was enraged at Apple. Then I read other places where it says that Apple subcontracts its service out to another firm that at times, just doesn't want to bother with smoke and tar filled computers. There are degrees to everything, but, worst case, there are smoker's computers where the sticky tar has totally coated the fan, attracting dust, getting more tar, attracting more dust, until the fan blades are gunked up almost solid. This stuff does not come off with compressed air and has to be scraped off of the power supply and cpu fans in order for them to work again and not overheat.

Look at some of the pics on some of these Apple smoke threads and see how bad the damage can get. It even coats the motherboard entirely. So in some cases, its not just a matter of a bit of smoke smell irritiating the technician. It can get so bad that there's no way to clean the machine inside short of just scraping off the major chunks.

Greg

not to mention all that nasty crap that condenses on the lens' of optic drives, usually making them useless fairly quickly , but that holds true with any/all puters and I was made aware of this at least 15-16 years ago so it's nothin new.

I know smokers probably do not want to hear this, but if the smoke can do this damage to the fan, motherboard, lenses of optic drives, etc., think what it does to the lungs. steve t

I've been smoking in front of my pc for over 30 years. Only once have I lost a fan and power supply. Since then I open it up and clean it properly every 3 months. by the time my cd/dvd drives start giving out it's time to upgrade anyway if you want to take advantage of the newer software and hardware..