Slightly OT: Damaged Laptop Computer RF Emissions Safe?

No. If there were, you wouldn't have been allowed to buy it in any reasonably governed country.

Define "unsafe".

Ignoring the tin-hat brigade, it takes _lots_ of RF energy to be unsafe to human or animal life, and the safety problem created is one of RF heating, which is fairly easy to notice. There's simply not that much power generated inside of a laptop for you to need to worry.

It may start interfering with radios, but I suspect it'd have to take major damage before that happened.

Defined "reasonably governed country"?

For the last 8 years the US was not now it is. The UK is certainly not at the moment.

Thanks. My paranoid and suspicious mind went in a lot of directions on this. Here are all my thoughts. Feel free to poke fun at me.

a)I did visit serveral websites about laptop repair and view disassembly photos. There doesn't seem to be any shielding in the things to suggest that they are dangerous. There is a little shielding, but I would guess it is just to avoid radio interference by covering up the noisiest things. I would guess that most of the RF emissions are handled by prudent design of the motherboard.

b)A web search about the dangers of damaged laptops turned up nothing.

c)I've gotta assume that there are college kids running around using laptops that were run over by a skateboard and then duct-taped back together. I've never heard of any safety concerns.

d)On some of the laptop repair sites, there were people who had severely dropped laptops. There was never any mention by anyone about safety or about any required inspections or tests when patching the things back up.

e)On a ham radio site, they mentioned essentially that anything below 5W isn't too much to be concerned about. There is no way a laptop could radiate 5W accidentally. That is a huge power investment for something like a laptop.

f)One site mentioned that modern computing equipment was much less noisy than older computing equipment as evidenced by the noise induced on an AM radio.

As of 30 minutes ago, I am now the proud owner of a Radio Shack $11.99 battery-powered AM/FM radio. My guess would be that AM is pretty sensitive to digital noise because of the math involved (Mr. Fourier and all that).

Anyway, I discovered that my laptop generates static within about 2 feet of the radio, but only above and below (which I would expect because of the current paths). I compared that with my 22-inch iMac. The iMac is actually maybe 50% noisier.

If I sit the laptop on a table and it doesn't create much static on an AM radio 3 feet below it or 3 feet above it, it ain't a powerful transmitter.

I'll compare the AM interference with laptops at work. If they are similar ... I'm satisified.

Thanks for your reply, The Lizard.