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Comment by Groxx | Hacker News Reader

Very much exciting the "WANT" circuit in my brain. The price prevents it from firing, but I love the idea of opening up a book in class to take notes / compile code.

Only thing I'm questionable on: the * ziiiiip * sound when you open it. Very un-book-like. But better than velcro.

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There are some paper notebooks which close using a magnet embedded in the cover. Not very harddisk-friendly, though.

I doubt a magnet that small would cause any problems. I'm not sure about the new MacBooks Pros, but the old ones had an embedded magnet that I think was used to detect the screen closing.

As far as I'm aware, all Mac laptops now use magnets to keep the screen closed. Quite strong ones, really, they easily keep it from being accidentally opening.

That said, at least some of them have put the HDD in the back now, instead of near the front (don't know if it's all). It could be that the magnetic closing was part of the decision to move them.

Hard drives have two extremely powerful neodymium magnets in them anyway, attached to the arm which moves back and forth. Millimetres from your platters. I have a hunch that a fairly steady magnetic field is probably fine, it's erratic/alternating magnetic fields which are likely to kill things.

The MagSafe socket (not the plug) on all MacBooks made since 2006 is magnetized also. If we still had floppy disks this might be a problem but I don't think it is in this age of CD/DVD and USB key media.

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