Our hardware manager shocked most of the office when she put some filthy keyboards in the dishwasher, myself included. Thanks for enlightening me. She’ll be happy to see this thorough article.
thanks! Just prompted me to wash everything in my cube.
Yep, I can’t stand it. Plus, without fail, it’s the people with the most disgusting keyboards and monitors themselves that absolutely insist on touching my screen to point at something when actual pointing from a few inches away would be more than enough.
Man, this would have made a great Seinfeld episode, along the lines of the “low talker” and the “close talker”: the “screen toucher”.
I have been using these Artensia products for a while and I love them. Theonly problem I have is that people always seem to steal them from my desk. They have used natural products so they clean your computer gear and protect you from chemicals…etc.
Sounds like me; I can’t stand fingerprints (on anything, really). My mouse, keyboard, and monitor are holy relics, as far as I’m concerned, and I’m the only one holy enough to touch them. I had a guy where I worked once get so fed up with my OCD, he literally licked my mouse. Yes, he picked it up, stuck out his tongue, and licked it. I about puked. It took nearly half a day of cleaning before I was ready to use that mouse again. I still get chills thinking about it.
The Windows equivalent to Mac’s Keyboard Cleaner: unplug!
People forget about the simplest solutions. Why go through the hassle of unplugging the keyboard, if you can download some nifty software that renders your keyboard useless (what was the key combination again that re-enables my keyboard? Let me google that - oh crap!)
Filthy keyboards are the computer age way to ensure survival of the fittest!
Oh man, my belly was jiggling when I read “Poky McSmudgypants.” I totally agree about a monitor being a hands-free device.
Jeff,
For what it’s worth I’ve put a Microsoft Office Keyboard (http://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-E17-00002-Office-Keyboard/dp/B00005NVBO) with a lot of sticky keys (some coke fell on it) in a dishwasher WITHOUT the hot drying cycle. I never cleaned the keyboard after the spill and it was sitting on myself for 3 years.
After the dishwashing rinse, I let it dry outside for 5 days. This is to ensure all the water is all dried up to prevent any short-circuits.
Result: squeaky clean keyboard. But it wasn’t perfect - some grime still did exist underneath some keys. I guess if I pulled out all the keys it would have been a perfect job.
I’m fairly relaxed about my screen. I don’t like to touch it but I don’t really get upset about people touching my screen.
What does amaze me though is watching people touch there monitor with such force it visibly sways back and forth. Several people I’ve worked with use force just short of shattering the monitor and having to take a quick trip to the ER for stitches. I continually amazes me.
Yes, Air Duster, so we can kick all of that nastiness into the air instead of down in the tray of our keyboards.
BRILLIANT!
I hate it when people compare dirty things to toilet seats. What touches toilet seats? Asses. And what do asses touch? Toilet seats and the inside of your underwear. That’s about it.
Almost every test shows that the handle to the bathroom door is many times more infected than the toilet seat.
You want to check something for nastyness, try the doorknob to any busy restaurant door. Or a toothbrush. Or the inside of your shoes.
I used to work with a guy who ate at KFC at least 3 times a week and usually brought his chicken back to work. He would munch away and type and munch and type. You couldn’t even see the plastic below the keys on his keyboard for all of the chicken batter bits down between the keys. When he left the company we threw his keyboard into the dumpster from the roof of the building just to excorsize those demons.
I have it easy. I have a tablet, so that means lots of hand grease on it - I have to touch it whenever I use the tablet part. However, this model actually has a glass screen. So it is really, really easy to clean (and it looks great when freshly cleaned). Also, pencils and pens have no effect. It’s like writing on a window. I should use dry-erase markers… =P
Nice article though. I need to clean my keyboard. 6 months old, and never cleaned before. Used 14 hours a day. Really dirty. I tend to eat t here too (only place to sit down in my dorm).
Daniel
To J.Stoever:
“I almost cried when I had to throw that old buddy away. It had codes to Zak McKracken written on the side with permanent markers,[…]”
I’d have kept the keyboard in my “sentimental stuff” box. I have my
Pro-audio Spectrum 16 sound card stored away. I did a lot of cool things with it and simply refused to dump it when the time came.
Duncan said: “Doesn’t anyone else think that it’s the office cleaner’s job to wipe down keyboards/mice/screens/telephones?”.
Yes, it is. But they never do it right. We’re anal people, mind you. 
Once, in my previous job, one of the cleaners left a nasty scratch in a 2-months-old monitor. No one wanted to assume responsibility, claming “it was already like that when we found it”. We were stuck with it for a year until my boss reported that it had stopped functioning [1] and had to be replaced (the monitor).
[1] Monitors have this tendency to not work anymore if the power cord disappears…
Re: Vizeroth
I’ve only seen one of those systems in which users continued using the touch screen after a week or so of use.
You are correct that touch screens are often used where they don’t belong, and as the technology gets cheaper the chance for mis-use will only increase. That doesn’t mean its going to become less common, and it doesn’t mean their aren’t good uses for it.
Movie theater automated ticket purchasing machines are using touch screen technology in a very natural way. And the usage may be limited, but as you pointed out PDA/Cellphones are a common implementation of touch screen tech.
The multi-touch technology is only now starting to be exploited as a consumer product, and as the costs go down I think we will start to see this more and more.
So while touch screen solutions are not always successful, they do have a place in society, and they are only going to become more common as time goes on.
You said it!
This reminds me of my favorite April Fools Day joke I played on people at work. I used a little java program to send out emails from ‘Ops Support’ stating that the new flat panel monitors that people had been getting have touch-screen technology built in and that the business would like it evaluated. It was amazing how many tech-savvy people were poking there screen trying to open a document.
"When I said there were two types of programmers, here’s what I really meant:
Programmers who touch displays with their greasy, disgusting, bacteria-addled fingers.
Programmers who don’t. "
Too bad there is only one type of littlebrother:
Brothers who touch displays with their greasy, disgusting, bacteria-addled fingers.
Btw, anyone tried to remove the dust from a CRT-screen that’s been on all day using a feather duster.
Smack! All the dust in the duster sucks onto the monitor because of the static electricity.
I beg to differ! The screens are for touching and pointing and I do it all the time!!
(I have noticed that my LCD screens don’t show fingerprints until you turn them off. CRT monitors definitely do…)
More irritating than other people leaving their fingerprints, is one self leaving one’s fingerprints.
I know I do. And It drove me nuts when I realized, so now I try pointing with the nail side of the finger, I just can’t avoid touching the screen, I will not beat myself and I’m pretty fast running, so I doubt anyone can catchme to kill me XD