Actually, there’s really no reason to put your keyboard in the dishwasher. Use the same technique with hot, soapy water and wash just like you would your dishes. It’s a lot safer than using the dishwasher – the temperature is a lot lower, so you don’t run the risk of melting anything, and the detergent is a LOT safer – no phosphoric acid (which can be a result of that dishwasher detergent) on my equipment, please!
As far as the display goes, I’ve mellowed out considerably since switching to an LCD based display. In the bad old days of CRTs, every bloody fingerprint would smudge on my display and show up whenever the screen went black. Now (with a non-reflectively coated LCD), not so much…
Nathan… not everyone has a million dollars so they can replace there high quality keyboard every few weeks.
Keyboards are the most disgusting things in the world unless its used by someone with half a brain. I also hate people touching my monitor because you can always see the nasty smudge on the screen from their greasy sausage fingers.
And type of public computers or classroom computers make me want to slit my throat
The only thing worse than the “touchers” are the “stabbers”. There’s one lady at work who jams her finger into the screen so hard that I expect the back of the display to crack in response. I’ve taken to shifting my chair when she stops by so that she can’t actually get to my screens.
A guy I used to work with had his screen so smudged up at one point that he literally could not read part of it. He even commented to me that he always had to scroll documents away from “the blurry area” to read the text. When I reached over with a tissue* and wiped the gunk away, he got the most baffled look on his face that I’ve seen and said “huh, I never thought of that.” (* I know, not the ideal screen cleaning product, but at that point it could hardly have made things worse.)
I would personally advise against using the foofoo cans to blow the bacterial gunk out of your keyboard. Like leaf blowers and bird droppings, an aerosol spray can make, well, an aerosol out of the stuff in the keyboard, at which point you will promptly inhale it.
Two weeks ago a guy at work sprayed a filthy old keyboard while I was standing next to him. We we’re both out sick for the next two days.
Jeff, head over to your local Ford dealership and purchase a bottle of Ford Triple Clean. (around $12 if I recall correctly.) It is by far the best keyboard cleaner I’ve found in twenty years.
If you are putting your keyboard in the dishwasher every few weeks you have issues. You obviously need to start wearing some surgical gloves before you use your keyboard from now on.
If you set your priorities right you should be able to avoid a new keyboard when one is required. You are a programmer, so spending your money on your programming needs should be a high priority.
I agree with Aaron - really annoying is when people want to point something on the screen, USING THEIR PEN as a pointing device. I have various coworkers with pen streaks all over their screens since they have the habit of doing that - never understood why.
Touching can be forgiven, its a learned behaviour from using the only other collaborative displays that most of us have used - whiteboards and blackboards. Even the most ardent anti-touch screen freaks can’t resist tapping blackboards and whiteboards to emphasize a point when “pairing” at a blackboard when the discussion gets heated…
At least I know I’m not the only person obsessed with screen cleanliness. The only problem I have is that my laptop is a convertible tablet. I carry a microfiber cloth with it all the time, so I can clean 10-15 time a day.
I’ve heard the dishwasher tick works, even complete.
Well, I haven’t had the luxury of owning a monitor I can warn people away from yet… I’m on a tablet so screen-touching is inevitable but a screen protector helps, so that’s not too big a problem.
I’ve cleaned both types of keyboards (PC and laptop), and both by complete disassembly. It’s not as troublesome as it seems; take a photo of your keyboard layout, proceed to pick off all the keys (which has a really gentle learning curve), throw them all (keyboard tray included, but not for the laptop!!!) in a tub of water (or soap water if you like), scrub away. Then lay them out somewhere to dry before reassembling.
It’s much more thorough than a dishwasher (yes, I am anal about it) and much more satisfying. But of course, I never let that much dirt accumulate in the first place so I can’t say much for the ecosystem-keyboards.
@Nathan: Buying a new keyboard every so often is kinda wasteful, don’t you think? If you can clean the house, your clothes, your cutlery and a whole host of other stuff you use frequently, why not your keyboard as well?
I wish I could afford to buy new dishes and clothes all the time so I never need to wash them again.
Years ago one of my coworkers kept seeing ants and other bugs around his desk. We eventually saw one crawling out behind a keyboard letter. I took the cover off and the inside was swarming with little bugs-- really one of the more shocking things I’ve seen. I assume they were eating crumbs and other things that had fallen on the keyboard.
To be fair to my coworker-- he’d just inherited the old machine from someone who’d left the company.
I did rinse the cover and sponge the inside out before I reassembled it. However, one of the shift keys stopped working and we eventually threw it out.
I am a fan of touching screens. I have taken it a few steps further: White board markers work just as well on screens as they do white boards. This combination is my favorite rapid prototyping tool. Nothing is more empowering than letting your customer write on their software.
“Buying a new keyboard every so often is kinda wasteful, don’t you think?”
@kureshii: I guess it depends on which is more important to you. Your time or your money. You’re going to waste one or the other either way. Since time = money, the amount of time you will waste away taking your keyboard apart and cleaning it, should be less than the amount of time it should take you to buy a new keyboard. In the article above, Jeff talks about waiting several days! for it to dry out… and plus he already bought a new one to use as a replacement.
If you’re going to go to all that trouble, I say to hell with it and just buy a new one and throw the old one away.
I mean how often are you people taking apart your keyboard and putting it in the dish washer, and then letting it dry for several days and then putting it all together.
Are you people doing this every week?!! I would only consider it a once or twice a year deal. If you are attempting to do all that more than once or twice a year, then you obviously got a redicous amount of time to waste.
I have a some logitech wireless keyboard, which obviously has a lot of technical stuff inside, and it was REALLY gross a month or two ago. I just took it apart, without removing the electrical parts, sprayed it down with some diluted Simple Green, let it sit for a while, and then rinsed it off. The keys themselves I actually immersed to get out the hair and whatnot. Anyway, it worked great. I let it sit overnight before putting the batteries back in and all was well.
but a screen protector helps, so that’s not too big a problem.