March 12th, 2013

Redistributing computers among offices for heating purposes

Some time ago, I joked about the people who rearrange computers in their house during the winter in order to use them as space heaters.

Turns out this happens a lot at Microsoft. One of my friends said that one of his coworkers used a small heater in her office to keep warm. On the other hand, his office always ran warm because of all the computers in it. They hit upon a simple solution to both problems: “Now she’s using a 12 core/24 thread space heater that’s a lot quieter than her old one.”

At one point in time, I had a large number of computers in my office, including an Itanium prototype. (You knew it was a prototype because it contained Engineering Styrofoam.) The thing generated a lot of heat. My friend across the hall, on the other hand, had a cold office. Solution: With some help from colleagues, we moved the Itanium across the hall. Two problems solved.

Author

Raymond has been involved in the evolution of Windows for more than 30 years. In 2003, he began a Web site known as The Old New Thing which has grown in popularity far beyond his wildest imagination, a development which still gives him the heebie-jeebies. The Web site spawned a book, coincidentally also titled The Old New Thing (Addison Wesley 2007). He occasionally appears on the Windows Dev Docs Twitter account to tell stories which convey no useful information.

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