My dongle, it's sticking to things :o

[Ellie]

Ok.

I have a laptop, and can't use laptop touchpads for shit when doing detailed stuff such as spriting. So I have a USB wireless mouse.

The dongle (or whatever you call it, the thing that plugs into the USB) has become, or already was, magnetic. It keeps sticking to the casing of the laptop.

Not good? Magnets can wipe CD's, hard drives, destroy monitors, etc.

Is this normal? Are all dongles magnetic? Can this hurt my laptop?

 

[Desecration]

I'd imagine that your laptop is fairly safe from the evil magnetic dongle as generally good retailers wont supply things that are likely to harm/break your stuff. Though I guess if you're really worried you could always just get a wired mouse and avoid using a dongle?

 

[Cheeze]

I would say to try and keep it in a different pouch or something from your Screen. I don't think a small magnet can hurt your HD but I know a small magnet can hurt the screen.

 

[FlippyD]

It shouldn't be so powerful it ruins the laptop.

Hell, iBooks have magnetic powerplugs. Just keep it from wiping over the laptop too close for too long and use the USB ports closest to the disc drive I guess.

 

[Tohsaka]

It shouldn't been an issue, my Laptop has a MagSafe Power Port, and it doesn't do much. If you're concerned a lot, you might want to look into a Bluetooth mouse, or one of those mice that come with a Graphics Tablet.

 

[Kraft]

Lol, your dongle keeps stickin to things ^_^

 

[arev]

Lol @ Magnets can wipe CD's, destroy monitors, :D
CD's - no fuckin' way.
Monitors - CRT - sure, LCD - nay.
HDDs - possibly, but unless it's a very stron, premade magnet of a particular kind, the field won't be even close to what could damage your hard drive.
Have fun with your dongle

 

[___]

Don't worry about it, the only thing that's vulnerable to the kind of magnetic field you'll find in a passive magnet in your laptop is your hard drive and speakers, and you'd need a very strong rare earth magnet to cause any problems. The kind of magnetism you get from a fridge magnet or something similar probably won't hurt anything; just for safety keep it away from the general vicinity of the hard drive but don't worry too much. The big thing with magnets is to keep them away from crts and from direct contact with the case of the hard disc, and of course never get near any computer with a powerful electromagnet like a degausser or anything that generates an electromagnetic pulse or anything like that but you're unlikely to have any such device.

 

[Ellie]

Ah, so the whole "fridge magnets destroying laptops" is just an urban myth?

Oh well. I guess I don't have to worry as much about where I stick my dongle, thanks

 

[___]

Yeah. I could see some rare circumstance where maybe long term exposure magnetizes a steel frame (most of them are aluminum alloys) and over a long period of time that causes hard drive corruption or something, or where someone had some crazy strong fridge magnet and slapped it right over the drive. Generally speaking though magnet paranoia is just that. I use magnetic screwdrivers for all my PC work and I've never once had a problem, and I've had plenty of people bring me PCs with magnets slapped on the outside (although I generally advise against it just because I don't want to hear about how I told them it was okay then their computer had a problem and it *must* have been the magnet).