my friend just called me, on his dell inspiron 1150, apparently whenever he rests his hands down on it just below the keyboard on either side of the mouse ... the machine shuts off. what the hell kind of hardware failure could this be? i can't even think of a hypothesis of something that it MIGHT be. ANY ideas would be appreciated for this.

if the hard drive is mounted in that vicinity, could be the hard drive is a little loose. Check that first. Any other flakey connection may be affected by any flexing of the case when the weight of his hands are on it. 98% of the population is asleep. The other 2% are staring around in complete amazement, abject terror, or both.

its a grounding issue and he should be taking advantage of the great service contract that he probably has Signed Dell Tech

definately a loose connection or a bad ground. this is why Dell laptops have gone downhill over the past few years, soft/cheap cases

they will probably will send a dell tech with a new palmrest

Try disconnecting the touch pad ribbon.They tend to fray just where the keyboard ends and the touch pad begins.You will need to remove the screen in order to get the trim away .There is a small plastic clip holding the ribbon to the underside of the keyboard connection.that needs to be removed to disconnect the ribbon.

I have a dell latitude laptop with a similar but slightly different problem. The computer would not turn on unless there was pressure on the keyboard. The problem was a loose screw in the middle rear of the case. Apparently current from the battery flows through the subassemblies and the screw clamped two parts together. Just tightened the screw and no problems for over a year.