Dell computers switched off by a Nokia receiving a text

Dell Hell again.

Steve, who’s just purchased a brand spanking new Dell laptop, sent me this story from The Register.

The crux of the issue is this:

If you put a mobile phone near the hard disk and that phone receives a text message or phone call then the computer will go into suspended animation.

The article links to blogger, Rickard Lijeberg, who took a video of the issue happening back in June.

It’s apparently a power supply shielding issue.  One comment posted on Rickard’s blog is potentially enlightening:

This works on our current batch of Dell GX520’s using some quite old Nokia Phones as well as new Tri/Quad band phones. The placement of the phone is key because this part of the Dell has no sheilding (the blanking plates are simply plastic). When the mobile phone is placed directly above the CD/Floppy drives or any other part of the baseunit we can’t get it to power off (yet !).

We did get some great results with a T-Mobile MDA (aka o2 xda mini) which sent the graphics on the LCD crazy – going to try an replicate this particular fault when we have the video camera up & running !.

Phil,
Edinburgh.

I embedded the video of Rickard’s experience here: