Indicators of Waste Heat

In my home we joke about the “dig­i­tal hearth” — the warm sur­face above the ampli­fier and set-top box, a favorite place for cats to nap. Over the years we’ve learned that our cats are always the first to detect which elec­tron­ics throw off the most waste heat. They’ve learned to dis­cern the dif­fer­ences  between on, off and standby modes.

Our cats’ favorite heat sources, even when in standby mode: color laser print­ers, music com­po­nents, TVs. The Sony Playsta­tion 3 is also a favorite perch when the cur­tains are open, as it affords both a heated sur­face and a com­fort­able place for bird watch­ing.

And now a new item has been added to the list of cat-entic­ing heat sources: the home office phone.

For­merly, desk­tops warmed by Pen­tium lap­tops were their all-time favorite heat sources. Now that I’ve switched to an i7 Mac­Book Pro, there’s much less waste heat, so Lizzie has switched her “love” to the phone.

Signs of progress, I guess…