posted
Well, my laptop is just two months shy of being two years old. And in that time, I have not once cleaned its keyboard, aside from occasionally running a Post-It note between the keys to pick up a few loose hairs.
Unfortunately, with between two and four cats living in the house, there's always a LOT more hairs than there appears.
And so, last night I shut down my computer, pulled the keyboard out of the frame, and proceeded to pry out every single key from the board and spend a full hour cleaning out everything that was underneath.
I think I'm lucky... I only broke one key getting them all out -- a tiny plastic nub to hold the mechanism together underneath the "6" key. And the spacebar, being especially wide, was an interesting task to get back into place. The entire keyboard is made of a strange mechanical design I've never seen before...
I took pictures, but I'm about five or ten years behind the times, and will have to wait until I can finish the film roll and get it developed, rather than import the file directly to my hard disk.
The funny thing, though (which I'm finally getting to) is the method which I used to get underneath the scissor mechanisms that make the keys go up and down... dental floss. Yes, that's right -- Oral-B's unwaxed "ultra floss," with extra-thick strands that were actually pretty good at getting around the teeny corners and getting those random remaining cat hairs left over after I pulled most of them off using that gummy "stick-tack" that we used to put up posters in the dorm room.
I wonder... will I stop being so inventive after I graduate from college?
Anyway, the moral of the story is: be sure to clean your keyboard at least KIND OF frequently. Otherwise, it's a complete bitch to take care of. I got everything cleaned out, but I must've spent an hour cleaning those dang keys and putting them back in place!
-------------------- “Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.” — Isaac Asimov Star Trek Minutiae | Memory Alpha
Registered: Nov 2000
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posted
Why clean at all? I have never cleaned any of my keyboards an have never had any trouble. And some of them have been in use for ten years.
Of course I don't have any pets...
-------------------- Lister: Don't give me the "Star Trek" crap! It's too early in the morning. - Red Dwarf "The Last Day"
Registered: Nov 1999
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posted
And headphones. And mousemats. And spea-um, maybe I should stop talking.
I use a big exterior Dell-keyboard. All I need to do is brush it aggressively with a dry dish brush once a year, then suck it with my vacuum cleaner's brush-mouthpiece. V��l�. And I do have a nosy cat.
Since I've seen some bad examples of how dusty a computer can get inside (been selling and renting them out for six years) I always sniph the vents and exhausts at the back of the comp with the vvaaccuumm cleaner.
I love the optical mice of today, you don't have to do a damn thing except not drop them.
-------------------- "I'm nigh-invulnerable when I'm blasting!" Mel Gibson, X-Men
Registered: Aug 1999
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posted
Well if you don't have any pets, then it's obvious why you don't have to clean out your keyboard.
I've lost count of the times that my cat has jumped up on the couch armrest where I've placed my computer and sat on my arm as I'm trying to type. And of course, the expression "fur fly" has a very literal meaning, as the slightest disturbance in a cat's coat can send entire clumps of fur floating into the air where it can easily drift onto the keyboard.
Then there are the handful of times when Sassy chose to sit directly on my laptop's keyboard while my back was turned... (Damn cats are smart -- they don't know what it's for, but they know that the computers are important and are competitors for attention that would otherwise be given to them!)
-------------------- “Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.” — Isaac Asimov Star Trek Minutiae | Memory Alpha
Registered: Nov 2000
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Cartman
just made by the Presbyterian Church
Member # 256
posted
Project: culture self-aware input device.
Ingredients: dead skin, hair, coffee drops, bread crumps, dust, sweat, nail splinters, other food residue.
Estimated time to critical organic mass: two years.
"Well if you don't have any pets, then it's obvious why you don't have to clean out your keyboard."
Don't be so sure. B)
Registered: Nov 1999
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posted
I have a compressed air thingy which probably doesn't do much more than rearrange to dust and cat hairs but is fun to use.
-------------------- "I am an almost extinct breed, an old-fashioned gentleman, which means I can be a cast-iron son-of-a-bitch when it suits me." --Jubal Harshaw
Registered: Feb 2002
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