How to turn-on/wake-up a laptop without opening the lid?

Question

I use my laptop with 2 external monitors and external keyboard (I use it as a desktop at home), but when I go out I only take the laptop of course.
What bothers me is that I always have to open and close the lid just to press the power buton.
I dont have enough free space in my working area to keep my laptop's lid open, and I dont want to keep it that way either.

Is there a way I can wake-up/turn-on my laptop without opening the lid?

I dont have another computer in my LAN (just my laptop and router) so the wake-on-lan technique wont serve my needs.
Unless.... there would be some kind of device (a simple and small device) that connects to a LAN and sends the magic packet. But such a device would have to have a way to receive a MAC address as input from the user, so I don't think such a device exists at all.

Answer 1

Check the BIOS if it supports wake-up on USB, then you can wake it up with an external keyboard.

Answer 2

What OS are you using?

There should be many WakeOnLan utilities out there.

For Mac you could use this one: WakeOnLan

For Windows there are also a few out there: WakeOnLan 2, ...

Answer 3

How about this :

Set control panel -> power options -> what to do when the lid is closed -> choose "do nothing".

put your pc to sleep, close the lid, then when you move your mouse, it should wake up.

Not sure if it will work, or if you have already tried it. Please let me know so I edit / delete my answer if necessary :)

Answer 4

I have a Dell Inspiron N5110 laptop. You do want to set it to "Do Nothing" when the lid is closed, but this alone was not enough for me. I had to go into the BIOS and "Enable" the Wake on USB option. This feature was disabled on my laptop. Works great now. I just click the mouse or keyboard and it powers up from a sleep state.

Answer 5

I currently have the exact same problem you have, and have solved it somewhat unsatisfactorily using the wake-on-usb + keyboard/mouse solution posted by other users here. Unsatisfactory because it only wakes from sleep and not hibernate/full shutdown.

On the other hand, there is a rather weird, low tech solution that seems like it might work: attach a balloon to a tube, and attach the other end to a balloon pump. Came across the solution here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LSsqOQH4LQQ (the poster of the video also claims you need to remove a magnet from within the screen that detects when the screen is shut - YMMV)

Unfortunately for me, I started looking for a solution after my laptop's screen hinge broke thanks to opening and shutting it for years just to power it on - it's currently too delicate to stuff a balloon and inflate it every time I want to power it on, so I can't try it out myself.