User’s brand-new laptop keeps going into standby mode at random, reports a pilot fish on the scene.

Local techs try replacing parts, updating the BIOS and everything else they can think of, but nothing improves the situation.

So someone decides to observe the user as she works — and sees that every time she moves her left hand past the corner of the laptop, the laptop drops into standby mode.

Could the problem be that magnetic bracelet on her left wrist?

The vendor confirm that there’s a magnetic switch on the display cover and the palm-rest area, used to make the system go into standby automatically when the laptop is closed, says fish. Anything with a magnetic field that gets close enough to that sensor will trigger the switch and make the system go into auto-standby.

“The only option to resolve it,” says fish, “was to request the user not to wear the magnetic bracelet while working on her laptop.”

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