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If the ambient air temperature is below freezing, like in the single digits F, will a typical, say, Dell laptop doing typical laptoppy stuff drain its battery (a) more quickly; (b) more slowly; (c) about the same; or (d) there’re too many variables to tell?
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If the ambient air temperature is below freezing, like in the single digits F, will a typical, say, Dell laptop doing typical laptoppy stuff operate (a) more efficiently; (b) less slowly; (c) about the same; or (d) there’re too many variables to tell?
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Are 1. and 2. different questions?
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Should question 3. be question 0.?
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Battery life and performance is impacted by cold. As cold as you suggest and battery life will be significantly affected. Batteries self heat when delivering power, so if you start with a warm battery, self heating might be enough to keep things running OK. But if the battery is in the single digits F, it may not have enough capability to get anything going at all. The computer may simply not work.
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operate (a) more efficiently; (b) less slowly; (c) about the same; makes little sense. Contrasting efficiency with speed requires a very specific definition of efficiency when talking about computation.
Anyway, if the computer is fed with cold air, it can cool itself better, and given enough electrical power to run flat out it can avoid having to throttle down its processor in the face of heating a bit earlier. Given the very difficult issues with battery, it may not get to this point. With very low battery performance, if it runs at all, it might be running in low power mode with a significant reduction in compute speed. Even if it can get enough power, it won’t run faster than it normally can, just do it for longer. -
They are indeed totally different questions.
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Maybe.
I accidentally left my HP in the car overnight last night. When I took it into my office, its temp was probably at least -25 C, possibly colder (nighttime low seems to have been around -35 C).
When I tried to start it in my office, plugged into the docking station, the first time nothing happened. The second time, I got the “HP” splash screen, for about 10 seconds, then it conked out. The third try, after about 10 minutes in my office, it did start. Worked fine all day.
I don’t know if the third time was because it had warmed up enough, or the docking station was providing sufficient power in spite of the cold battery, or a combination of the two.
I don’t know specifically about Dell laptops, but in general you don’t want to freeze any computer.
If it’s a reasonably modern laptop, then it probably has a solid state drive, so you don’t need to worry about it freezing. Older mechanical drives can have problems with their bearings and can be completely ruined by trying to run them when the drive is too cold. You can also end up with data loss due to expansion/contraction of the metal in the drive head causing the head to be misaligned with the data tracks on the drive platter.
If you have a CD/DVD drive, its bearings could be damaged by the cold, especially if the laptop spins up the drive as part of its self-test.
The laptop’s cooling fan could be damaged. With the laptop that cold you might expect that it wouldn’t need to turn the fan on, but the laptop might spin it up for self-test or may try to run it at a slow speed just so it has an indication that the fan is working. If the grease in the bearings has solidified in the cold then the fan bearings will be damaged and the fan may no longer work.
Laptop displays can be cracked or otherwise damaged in the cold.
Laptops have both a storage temperature range and an operating temperature range. The storage range will be how hot or cold the laptop can safely get if you do something like leave it in your trunk on a very cold or a very hot day. The operating temperature is how hot or cold the laptop should be before you turn it on.
The laptop’s minimum storage temperature is often determined by how cold the laptop can be before the display is possibly damaged.
@Northern_Piper definitely violated the laptop’s minimum operating temperature, which is kinda obvious since it didn’t even turn on at first. Next time, I strongly recommend letting the laptop warm up before turning it on. You’d have to check the specs to see if the laptop’s minimum storage temperature was also violated. Many laptops can be permanently damaged by temperatures that low, even if you don’t turn them on.
Performance-wise, once you get up above the temperatures where you risk damage to the laptop, the laptop will run at peak performance up until it starts to overheat, at which point the CPU may throttle its performance to prevent cooking itself to death. In other words, a typical laptop will have peak performance over a typical operating range of something like 45 deg F to 95 deg F (8 to 35 deg C -ish). You don’t get any performance boost from being on either end of that range. The laptop will run just as fast at 50 deg F as it will at 90 deg F.
As far as long-term reliability goes, you do get a benefit from being on the cooler end of that range. Laptops tend to run hot, so the closer you can get the CPU and other high performance chips to room temperature, the better. A laptop in a 50 deg F room will last longer (on average) than a laptop in a 90 deg F room.
Efficiency-wise, most laptops tend to run hot, so the laptop’s cooling fans will work harder as the temperature rises. The laptop in the 50 deg F room will be more efficient since it isn’t using as much energy to power its cooling fan(s).
For the lithium-ion type batteries that are in most laptops these days, heat kills. Again, the battery in a laptop in a 50 deg F room will last longer than a battery in a laptop in a 90 deg F room.
Lithium ion batteries don’t want the temperature too cold, though. Batteries rely on chemical reactions to work, and once you get cold enough to slow those chemical reactions down, the battery stops working. As @Francis_Vaughan said the battery capacity is going to be reduced once you get below freezing temperatures. You can also permanently damage the battery by trying to charge it while cold, so if your laptop isn’t smart enough to reduce the charging current while the battery is cold (and it probably isn’t) your laptop can ruin your battery just by going through its normal charging cycle. Lithium ion batteries also discharge more quickly when cold.
My bad! 
I seem to have gotten away with it this time, but will try not to leave the poor thing in the car overnight again. 
Condensation can be a problem when bringing cold articles into warm environments.
Which is why it’s a good idea to seal the cold article in an (at least somewhat) airtight enclosure while it’s still in the cold environment. Bring the packaged article inside and allow the entire package to warm to room temp before opening.
Yes, my computer was in a computer bag, but not airtight, so it had a bit of a frost built-up on it.