There's a full page advert for PC World's 'Computer Healthcheck', costing £39.99, on page 12 of today's 'Daily Mail'.

It features a spotty child with a thermometer in his mouth. A very close inspection of the thermometer in the photo shows that it's graduated in Fahrenheit.

The banner headline to the advert is:

"TEMPERATURE OF 102, BUT AT LEAST I DON'T HAVE A VIRUS"

So what?

The Dixons group are known for their pro-imperial marketing. However in this case their advertising department are showing their ignorance.

Modern PC temperatures are monitored and regulated by the cooling fan(s). The CPU temperatures are displayed in the BIOS screen in Celsius, as are the manufacturers specification for minimum/maximum working temps. This includes devices made in the US.

"The CPU temperatures are displayed in the BIOS screen in Celsius"

Not true - they use both

Thanks Steve, Ive checked a few examples and you are right. I guess its AMIBIOS (American).

However there does seem to be a consistent tendency to quote working temps in degrees C only from the chip manufacturers.

One of the reasons why chip manufacturers tend to work in degrees C is that degrees C is the mandatory system of temperature measurement for at least one engineering sector in every major industrialised country - in the USA I beleive that after the Mars probe fiasco, NASA is now demanding that all specifications be given in metric units. In the UK, the engineering industry is almost exclusively metric while in France, Germany and Japan it has never been anything but metric for the last century.