Food in Keyboard

Here are a few suggestions, though I have yet to try anything other than the compressed air method:

1) The good ol' "turn over your keyboard and give it a good shake" method. (Okay, yeah, I DID try this one also. Has limited results.)

2) Use the brush attachment of your vacuum cleaner and vacuum your keyboard.

3) The Container Store (www.containerstore.com) sells a USB powered keyboard vacuum for about $5.00 USD. It plugs into your USB port and comes with a brush attachment "to clean vents and fans" and a flexible rubber tip attachment "to get in between keys". I have no idea how well this works nor how much sucking power this little tool has. If I ever pick one up, I'll let you know.

4) If you are REALLY brave, put your keyboard in the dishwasher. Yes, I said the dishwasher. There are a surprising number of articles about this on the web. I typed in "clean computer keyboard dishwasher" into Google and came up with a number of good articles on how to do this. Here is one from slashdot.org:

http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/06/16/0128226

Like I said, you have to be a little brave to do this. Please note that any damage to your keyboard that may result from this method may not be covered by your warranty. It may, in fact, even void your warranty. Further, I claim no responsibility for any damage to your keyboard if you choose to use the dishwasher method. I'm simply informing you that this method is out there.

Good luck!


eMac G4 Mac OS X (10.4.9)

Take it with you on a picnic and put up a little sign, Free Food and the ants will take the crumbs away. But don't make the sign too big.

I'd definitely regard the dishwasher trick as a last resort. It's usually reserved for those who spill sugary liquids on the keyboard. Compresssed air or a vacuum cleaner should do the trick for crumbs.

BTW, I wouldn't think a $5 USB powered vacuum would be of much use. I can't imagine it has much sucking power.

Reposted from another thread I just replied to, but applies here as well...

Don't use the dish washer trick with an eMac keyboard (the Mac keyboard with the nice crumb and liquid catching clear under-tray). I recently had a spill on my keyboard and decided to take apart the keyboard to investigate why some of my old keyboard cleaning tricks were not working. On disassembly I discovered these keyboards are not like the keyboards of yester-year.
Old keyboards were simply a rigid printed circuit board (PCB) and then the keys over it that pressed down and shorted traces on the PCB to make a key stroke. hen those got dirty you could very easily literally wash them, let them dry and continue to use.
These newer Mac keyboards do not use the same method. Now they have a few layers of thin flexible plastic sheets with traces imprinted in them. Several of these are sandwiched together. The keys above press down and make contact and also press the layers of contacts together.
The problem with the new method is once you get liquid in there, the liquid seeps between the thin plastic layers and simply sits forever with no air flow to dry out the liquid. So once you get liquid in there, it will either never dry out or take a very long time (months minimum) to dry out.
Once you get liquid in there, about the only solution is to pull the keyboard apart and separate all the layers and let them air dry or wipe them down. It is a PITA since each key has a little rubber dome that goes over each spot and they are not attached to the keys, so you have to put the layers back together, then put each of those 100+ rubbers in place then attach the backing rigid piece without moving any of the rubbers. It takes a fair amount of time.
My keyboard still doesn't work 100%, so I will buy a new one one of these days. Next time, I won't even bother with trying to clean it. I will just spend the $29.95 and get a new one.
Patrick

You can purchase canned air at any camera store. It's very inexpensive. If you go that route, DO NOT SHAKE THE CAN! If you do and you use it immediately thereafter, liquid will be sprayed.