Another n00b question and I’m just looking to have my expectations set correctly: Does spark core always run super hot? I mean, it’s literally very warm to touch, and it’s sucking so much current from my laptop that the laptop is burning my lap. But I’m not running any code on the core yet. So, wow, is this normal or do I perhaps have a problem board?
Mine runs slightly warm to the touch, nothing I’d call hot. Perhaps try a deep reset?
No, this is not normal. Would you mind doing a full (deep) update and coming back to let us know if that’s fixed it?
What do you mean with super hot?
If you can put your finger on the µP and/or CC3000 for more than 5sec without problems your device will have less than 60°C which is quite warm but not too worrying.
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Okay. Super hot might be an exaggeration. I can certainly hold my finger on it without getting burned. But I’m accustomed to very low power microcontrollers that never even get slightly warm. And I’m focused on building tiny, battery-powered things. So feeling the heat coming from this core is new for me and it’s causing me some concern. Heat like this just equates to fast battery drain. So my initial question was really “is it normal for the core to heat up even when it’s idle” and from the replies thus far I conclude that the answer is “yes”. So my next question is: Has anyone built long-running devices based on the core using small-ish batteries and, if so, what power conservation strategies were employed and how well did it work out? If there’s an article on this somewhere then please point me at it.
@gorsat, actually no, it doesn’t heat up very much when it’s idle, but in your case it’s not idle 
Even when you flash an empty sketch the Core is never realy entering an idle state, since it permanently stays in touch with your WiFi network and does every few seconds talk to the cloud.
To lower power consumption you’d have to do something about that and you can even send the Core into sleep/deep sleep to extend your battery life.
For some detail about this have a look here
http://docs.spark.io/firmware/#spark-sleep
http://docs.spark.io/firmware/#wifi-off
http://docs.spark.io/firmware/#advanced-system-modes