Yep, you guessed it. Half a can of Busch Ice all OVER my keyboard! How did this happen? you may ask.
Well, it was my twelth can. That I drank. Almost. Except for half the can. (I blame the cat)
I really like this keyboard (Dell). Can I wash it? Set it outside in the Sun? Put it in the oven? Use a hair dryer? Nuke it?
I’m thinking about putting it under my mattress, but for the fact that I’m 250 pounds. Of muscle, of course.
Right after the big spill I picked said keyboard up, turned it over, and drained it. (Into my beer can, of course) and the keyboard is still working.
I’ll post tomorrow if I can to keep you posted.
bye
I wonder if you alert the fine people of Anheuser Busch to this heartwrenching tale, expalin that you are a loyal member of the Natural Ice Young Achievers Brigade who has met with unforeseen misfortune, perhaps a new keyboard will be provided to allow you to continue with your crucial “research”…
You can wash it, just make sure the water you use isn’t very hot. Keyboards are made out of plastic, and if you’re not careful they can warp and become unusable.
Generally you can remove the keys, depending on the specific model of dell keyboard, and wash them individually. Residue of the beer may harden slightly and become sticky overnight which could render the keyboard hard to use, but if you drained it immiately there should be no problems.
I wouldn’t put it in the oven personally, but the hair dryer would be fine.
Spilled several ounces of water on my keyboard a few months ago. Took it apart as far as I could, let it dry out, reassembled it. It worked again.
At first.
After a few weeks some keys began working intermittently. Then some more. I finally had to toss it out when the PrtScrn became permanently activated, performing screen captures ad nauseam.
Beer will probably only make it even worse: key mechanisms will likely get sticky as the beer dries, unless you can thoroughly wash it all away with clean water.
Ugh, don’t try the dishwasher method. The standard dishwasher detergents are quite caustic and are capable of destroying printed circuit boards.
Hand washing is OK if you rinse in very clean water. Demineralised or distilled is probably OK. So stuff sold for irons or batteries. If you happen to have a RO water filter that is good too. You could probably use a surfacecant (i.e. a very small amount of hand dishwashing liquid), but you still will need to rinse in pure water. Then let it dry out totally. If you have to buy the water you will probably go though enough that you might still prefer to think about a new keyboard.
You could probably dowse it in rubbing alcohol without much problem. Rubbing alcohol is a good solvent and won’t hurt most internal electronics. Do this at you own risk though.
The keyboard I have here can have the front part unscrewed from the electronics part and be washed in the sink. I don’t know how common this is but could be worth checking.
I’ve washed a lot of keyboards in the dishwasher. It’s not hard.
Put the keyboard on the top shelf of the dishwasher with the keys facing down.
Wrap up the cord so that it can’t get tangled up in the moving parts of the dishwasher.
Don’t try this on an RF keyboard or a keyboard with an LCD display. You’ll probably kill the keyboard.
Don’t use soap. I just skimmed the article that was linked to above and I didn’t see them mention this. The keyboard will come clean enough without soap (I’ve seen YEARS of dirt and grime, coffee, soda, and all sorts of crud come off with no soap), and some soaps leave behind a residue that will gum up the keyboard and stop it from working.
Turn off the heat cycle at the end or you could bake your keyboard to death. Be careful. Sometimes this is called something like “Power Saver Dry” and you have to turn it ON to turn the heat OFF.
Don’t bother taking all of the keys off and all of that, like the linked article says. If you are going to go to that much effort then you might as well clean out the thing properly with a complete disassemble and cleaning with Q-tips and alcohol. The dishwasher is the quick and effortless method.
Make sure you let the keyboard dry for about 48 hours before using it.
I’ve had a 100 percent success rate so far, but YMMV. If the keyboard is already shot, what do you have to lose?
My experience has been much like Joe Frickin Friday. It seems to work for a while but gradually more and more keys quit working. Like others said, it doesn’t hurt to try these things, but you might want to start scoping out new keyboards now.
And just FYI, a brand-spanking new keyboard should be around the same cost as that 12-pack of Busch. Whether that means its too cheap to worry about spending much effort fixing, or worth the same intensive level of effort to save as a 12-pack of beer, I’ll leave up to you.
Absolutely. There are a host of inexpensive but good keyboards.
However, I would wash it thoroughly as outlined in some posts above, let it dry, and try it. Nothing to lose, and likely it will work. I’ve done this several times for clients with no problems.
As a computer consultant, I’ll give you the same advice I give everybody (usually to no avail): Do not ever, ever bring any liquid of any kind closer than 25 feet from your computer, keyboard, printer or any other electronic device!!! Same goes for anything that can shed crumbs. Or cats and dogs that can shed hair.
