:eek: Actually, it was my husband’s keyboard. He spilled a full cup of coffee with lots of sticky creamer in it.
I sent him off to buy a new one, then I took it apart. It had 25 screws in the back, I guess they didn’t want me in there, but I went in anyway.
The parts that make the keys bouncy look exactly like the playtex infant nurser nipples.
So, when I got the screws out, I suddenly had itty bitty nipples all over my work bench.
I found them all, I cleaned the coffee off everything Carefully, put it back together. Twice.
It sorta works, the “M” and “J” and arrow keys are dead. I think I’ll try once more, then it has to go to keyboard hell.
We have so many mices, and keyboards we could open a store… but nobody wants them.
The keyboard I use at home is about 4 years old and I pop the keys off every 6 months or so to clean under them. It’s amazing and horrifying to me how much hair and dust builds up inside the keyboard. What I do is pop all the keys off and then go at it with a bunch of q-tips giving it a very detailed and arduous dusting. Sure I could probably just buy a new one but there isn’t much need as long as I clean it and try to get rid of the dust and hair which might mess it up.
I’ve never spilled a drink on it, came close once but I manage to yank it off the desk as I saw the drink spilling. Why I didn’t catch the drink, I’m not sure, but I saved the keyboard.
I don’t have the patience to take a keyboard apart and clean it. And besides, Mrs Geek gets mad if I play with nipples that don’t belong to her.
If you want to clean coffee and gunk out of a keyboard, put it in a dishwasher. Follow the following rules:
Wrap up the cord so that it can’t get tangled in anything
Make sure the keyboard is upside down
Don’t use soap
If you have a heat cycle at the end of the wash, turn it off (this may be called “energy saver dry” or some such, and you may have to turn it ON to turn the heat off), otherwise the excessive heat can melt the keyboard’s plastic bits
Give it at least 24 to 48 hours to completely dry out before use
I’ve revived a few “coffee accident” keyboard that were thrown out from work this way. I also got a big pile of used keyboards for basically about 25 cents per keyboard once, but they were all kinda ratty. The dishwasher does a great job of taking all the gunk off of the keys and getting rid of years and years of crumbs from underneath.
If there is a freecycle group in your area, I’m sure someone will take them. I just gave away about a dozen keyboards and piles of other old useless computer parts. www.freecycle.org
picunurse: Do you realize how many Computer Geeks will now be tearing apart their Keyboard because of your post. By Og, the amount of keyboard destruction that will take place. Surely Penis will ensue.
Actually, that does work for laptop keyboards as well. You just have to take the keyboard out of the laptop. The last time I was involved with a wet laptop, I flipped it upside-down so the coffee could drain out while I looked up disassembly instructions on the maker’s website.