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Comment by mcescalante | Hacker News Reader

I think this is a really good idea, but if you look on eBay you can buy a 200cm by 45cm (~ 78.7 in by 17.7in) vinyl whiteboard sticker for $5. You could buy this, trim it down and use it on a handful of laptops at a significantly cheaper cost. There are lots of other listings for "whiteboard vinyl sticker" but here is the $5 one:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/New-Vinyl-Wall-Sticker-Removable-Whi...

Also, I wonder if a "whiteboard magnet" would stick well to a mabook or aluminum bodied portable - wouldn't leave any residue: http://www.ebay.com/itm/17-x-11-Dry-Erase-Magnetic-Refrigera...

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He has a pretty thorough DIY for anyone looking to go this route: https://www.sketchcase.com/diy/

I have tremendous respect for the decision to post the DIY guide alongside the product. I find this sort of kindness hugely inspiring.

Aluminum won't attract the magnet usefully, unfortunately.

Maybe a real hard disk drive will, though.

It'll just slide down slowly. Try it, it's a cool experiment that showcases eddy currents.

I like the suggestion for a fun experiment, but I think pklausler was referring to the fact that strong magnets tend to wipe spinning hard drives, making magnets a bad idea for non-SSD laptops.

Oh, duh. You're right, I totally misread that. :)

Bummer, makes sense though

Not to mention that magnets cause even Macbooks with SSD drives to enter sleep mode. Try it with an iPhone or iPad, or any other device with a magnet (as others have indicated, don't do this if your hd isn't solid state).

Yeah, it seems to trick the mechanism that detects the lid is closed. It took me a while to discover why my work laptop would go to sleep as I was typing, when I had it stacked on top of my (closed) personal laptop.

>I think this is a really good idea

Is it? Either you're looking at the whiteboard or at the screen. If the laptop is open, you can push it closed if you write on the back. If it is closed, you don't want to press too hard lest you damage the screen.

Why not just use a piece of paper?

Okay, is there some dissonance I'm not picking up on here in this thread? The item is sitting at 220+ votes, at the top of HN right now and looking at the timeline, it appears the only reason this is on sale is because people begged the author to sell them.

And in the thread... a bunch of people suggesting "Why not just DIY?", "Why not paper?", "It's useless on the back" etc.

This is obviously a popular item. Maybe some introspection?

Healthy skepticism is also warranted.

But you bring up a good point. Should the primary point of these kinds of threads be about giving props and praising the startup/service/product or should criticism and skepticism be allowed in as well.

I actually like it as product to personalize your laptop, as opposed to something to help your productivity.

I doubt most people would push so hard with a dry erase marker that they'd damage the screen. Laptops aren't that fragile.

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