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Around 2015, or so I was visiting Boston during some really cold winter (was -10 outside)

We were at the office, went out to wait for a bus, waited for 15 minutes, and since it was freezing we decided to go back inside and get uber/taxi.

I pulled my laptop out of the backpack, tried to turn it on - it was dead.

Lithium batteries don't like extreme temperatures. Is it possible to make a laptop that copes ok with extreme temperatures?

edit Apparently the Toughbook is able to cope with -16°C. Wonder how they do it.

Some Toughbooks go to -25 C.

Nope, the entire laptop was dead. Booted into some black screen of death, with glitches.

I never saw something like that before or after that.

Possibly condensing water caused some transient short circuit. If your laptop survived, you were lucky.

Kids these days.

Anybody remember when rental movies had warnings about letting them warm up before playing them if they were exposed to cold temperatures?