I did a very dumb thing yesterday. I was happily sitting at my desk, typing away, working on something or other, sipping my second cup o’ jo, focused on getting work done, when the phone rang. I reached across the desk and just managed to knick the side of a very full cup of just poured hot coffee, tipping it over directly onto my lovely, highly valued mac computer keyboard. Yikes!
First thing I did was swear—under my breath of course. Then, knowing time was of the essence, I flipped the keyboard upside down so that whatever liquid was on the keys would run off, then ran to the kitchen and grabbed the roll of paper towels and rushed back to the desktop and began to wipe up the mess. I never realized how much liquid was in just one cup of coffee, or how many paper towels it would take to mop it all up. Sigh.
Needless to say, the keyboard was soaked. I tried to sop it all up, even got in between all the little keys and as I cleaned I kept hitting keys and testing to see if they were going to short out or send sparks flying. Nothing like that happened, in fact all the keys worked! And I congratulated myself on my quick thinking and fabulous dexterity.
But this morning, after a night to dry out, the tab key is dead, the shift key is dead, and essentially, the keyboard has a lot of keys stuck in modus non operandi. I don’t understand it. There was no sugar in the coffee… just half and half, and not much of that, either… I’ve heard tales of such things happening to eager beavers as they work… but I thought the stick would come with the sugar sweet cokes and pepsi drinks. Who knew, even coffee can short out a keyboard.
I could try to take the keyboard apart and clean it… but there are no screws. It’s all sealed in one housing without any tabs to snap open. I need my shift key to work….! Any suggestions?
I’ve heard that if you put a wet cell phone or keyboard in uncooked rice, the rice will act as a desiccant to wick away the moisture.
Ok. Now that’s an idea I will try in the morning.Does it matter if it’s white or brown rice? ;-}
I don’t think the type of rice would matter. Here’s part of an on-line article…
“Place your laptop in a sealed container filled with uncooked rice for a few days.
My concern with this approach, of course, is that rice grains are small enough that they might end up in your laptop instead of around your laptop, which is what you really want. Perhaps you should bag the rice in nylon or some other very porous material.
The theory, that apparently works well for cell phones, is that the rice acts as a desiccant – absorbing moisture out of the air. If the container is properly sealed, the only place that moisture can come from is your laptop.
It’s a long shot, but given that the laptop’s not working, and as long as you can keep the rice outside of your machine, it couldn’t hurt.”
Buy a new one… or take it to a computer repair place and see if they can clean it for you 🙂
GOOD LUCK toots!
Stand your keyboard up in front of a fan…it will force the air in around the keys…I’d skip the rice..if that doesn’t work I’d consider it a message from the gods…cut back on the coffee…and buy a used, second hand keyboard