Hello.
No idea where to start with this one but STW seems to know everything…
If have a dozen magnets, each 2.5kg pull arranged fairly evenly over an area 2’x2′ roughly how close could I put a laptop before it causes any problems? Not Iterested in WiFi signals or anything, just the machine itself.
If I had another similar arrangement of magnets 18″ further away would that make any difference?
Thanks

Are you asking this question in relation to something you are planning to do? Or trying to rationalise something that has already happened? 🙂

Something I am planning, just being careful.
Magnetic tool-wall in proximity to where a computer is likely to be used, don’t want it going doolally.
I may just be being overcautious and it will be fine.
Magnets not yet purchased so can’t measure how far the field extends. I know it increases if you stack them, no idea what happens if you put the fairly close to each other but not in contact

Don’t try to stick the computer to the wall and it’ll be fine, IMHO.

https://www.kjmagnetics.com/fieldcalculator.asp

Was just about to post that link to KJ Magnets. Lots of useful stuff.

You are Magneto and I claim my five pounds

As long as you aren’t using an old school spinning disk you should be fine.  Most new laptops are SSD unless you have a very big disk inside.  The only other risk would be power supply cores being saturated so I would keep the power supply away the magnets as well.  However the field normally drops off very quickly with distance so I really can’t see it being a problem unless you are jammed right next to the magnets

One thing to watch out for with powerful neodymium magnets is pinching, getting skin caught between magnets and objects. It smarts!

Thanks guys.
Not really sure what to do with the info on the KJ link though, it seems to give field strength for individual magnets, how does this work with several magnets in close proximity, but not touching? Does this just increase the size of the field by whatever the distance is between magnets or is the field cumilative and gets stronger?
Not sure if it’s spinning disk or SDD. It’s a Panasonic Toughbook CF-C1, no idea how old as it was secondhand, new enough to have Windows 10, although I guess that could have been installed retrospectively. (EDIT) Google says 2011 and Win10 was a later upgrade.
The power socket will be roughly 6 feet from the magnets, although this will be a 12/240V 1800W sinewave inverter if that make any difference to anything

Wouldn’t risk it with a traditional hard disk. SSDs are less than forty quid so I would fit one as a matter of course.