E-Mail:
Author Avatar

Cleaning Keyboards

Take a look at your computer keyboard. Could it use a good cleaning? C’mon, you can admit it… unless you’ve recently undertaken a good keyboard cleaning, those keys aren’t quite showroom fresh. Cleaning keyboards has been a bit of an obsession of mine over the years, dating all the way back to mid ’80s when I worked in a corporate computer room where they bought those handy keyboard cleaning kits by the crate full…

Cleaning keyboards was the perfect busy work for those slow days. We’d haul out the shop’s hand vacuum and start by vacuuming the miscellaneous junk from between the keys. Then it was onto the good stuff. Tearing the keyboard cleaning kits’ foil packaging open always brought the unmistakable smell of isopropyl alcohol. Those handy foam swabs did a dandy job… we went through them by the boatload. Everyone appreciated having a sparkling set of keys to bang on… perhaps even more so that they didn’t have clean their keyboards themselves.

The oldest computer terminals in the shop looked like something out of Stanley Kubrik’s sci-fi classic 2001. And for good reason… legend has it they were the same Lear-Siegler terminals (and a remarkable foreshadowing of the original Apple iMac).

These days, I’m only responsible for the computers here at Rancho Indebto. Needless to say, I haven’t bought any keyboard cleaning kits in quite a while. My tools of choice are whatever happens to be at hand… a bottle of store brand alcohol, a bunch of cotton swabs, and a couple of paper towels and I’m good to go. But does my family appreciate those clean keyboards as much as my former co-workers?

That’s hard to say…

Tags: ,

5 Comments

I wash all our keyboards, and our clients, in the dishwasher. Not too hot, only a little soap, no drying cycle, keys facing downward and allow two to three days to dry.

For those of you who do work in repair shops, manufacturing plants or places with really dirty keyborads, Fast Orange (or simular products) work great for removing the dirty and grease… Just remeber, these products effectiveness are reduced by water, so rub the Fast Orange all over before getting wet, use the Q-Tips and soft toothbrush if needed.

One day on the Martha Stewart show she recommends canned air to blow out the debris on the keyboard.

I have been (and still am) a “keyboard cleaning maniac”… so, after using up truckloads of cotton swabs (which caused serious familiar problemss with wife and daughter), I decided to go “pro”: Plain Household Glass cleaner, cotton wool and angled tweezers. The cotton wool can take up much more dirt than the cotton swabs. I first seep a small piece of cotton and use the tweezers to get between the keys. This requires very much care, in order not to scratch the keys with the metal tweezers. Before the glass cleaner dries off, I make a larger ball of cotton (about the size of a table-tennis-ball) and put it vertically over a cluster of recently seeped keys, working it in a circular motion. The cotton will press the keys and it rattles a lot while it works itself between the keys getting all the sticky dirt out. You have to find the right balance between resolute cleaning and technical competence, in order to not mess up the keyboard. But the result is spectacular and I can do a complete Keyboard in less than 15 Minutes.

Hi everyone,

thought you guys can shed some light on the topic as I got lost figuring out what is what.

I used to run a few more or less successfull Internet projects in the past… which allowed me to spend time fishing - this is my old time favorite :)

But now it seems either I lost the track of things on the Internet or grew too old (lol) for this… so I thought of some Forex stuff… and got scammed by a site that I won’t mention here to not make the bastards public.

Being ripped of isn’t kind of thing I like, so before diving deeper I thought maybe some of you have had experience that you can share with me… maybe some strategies sites that work (and you PERSONALLY tested they work)…

So if there’s anything you know and can recommend, that’ll be *much* appreciated :)

Would you mind dropping your 2 cents mates? :)

Johnny

What Do You Think?

 


Anti-Spam Image

Want to Start a Blog Here for Free?

Are you an expert in one subject or another? If your goal is to help others and dispense hard-earned information back to the community, stake a claim on your very own Lockergnome blog today! You can write about anything - no matter the topic. Sign-up to start blogging!

57 queries / 0.323 seconds.