S/NSS: Almost ruined my laptop

[Jeffbx]

So it's Friday, the kids are in bed, the wife is at one of those silly 'parties' where friends try to sell things to you, so good time to watch some Futurama, right? Well, yes, if you're a geek with no life, like me.

So, I have my microwave popcorn & a big tall glass of Cherry Coke, my laptop is sitting there happily with the DVD spinning up, and BAM! I spill the entire Coke onto the keyboard of the laptop. @&*@^$#!!!!!!!!

It powers down immediately, and I think crap, that's the end of that. But I yank the power cord out, pop the battery, run it over to the sink and give it a good spraydown with water. I set it up on its side & let the water drip out for an hour or so, then dismantle the whole thing & dry it out the best I can. I even had to remove the CPU to dry around the socket.

I let it sit & dry all day Sat & Sun, then I put it back together Sunday night, cross my fingers, and holy crap it fires right back up as if nothing ever happened. So here I am, back at work posting from the machine that almost died.

I've said it before & I'll say it again - Dell Latitudes are some STURDY machines!

[cheapie]

haha...mine was a cup of coffee last christmas. what a pain!

http://www.littleboyinc.com/uploader/uploads/drying.jpg

[Jeffbx]

Hahaha! That's exactly what my kitchen table looked like, but I had the LCD off, too. I'm surprised I didn't lose any parts...

[kimchicowboy]

is it still covered by the warranty? and how difficult would it be for a newb like me to dismantle a laptop if that happened to me?

anyhow, cool! :)

[Memo]

is it still covered by the warranty? and how difficult would it be for a newb like me to dismantle a laptop if that happened to me?

anyhow, cool! :)

It's not THAT hard to dismantle. The screwholes are labeled like K for keyboard and such. To open up to the inside you remove the keyboard and pop it off. Then you can access the internal components. Removing LCD and some other stuff will probably make it harder to put back together though.

I've also spilled water on 2 laptops of mine. I wonder why they don't just make spill proof keyboards on these things? It's a very common occurence. They probably just want you buying more.

[Jeffbx]

Yes, it's still under warranty, but unfortunately this one doesn't have accidental damage coverage so I would have been SOL.

I've seen at least one laptop where they actually seal the keyboard so if you spill on it, you just pour it out & rinse it under the faucet. Can't remember who made it. I imagine that might cause some heat issues, though.

They're not that hard to dismantle - the documentation is posted on the website, so I just downloaded that to make sure I was removing things in the right order. There are about 27 different sized screws, though, so you have to keep track of what came from where.

[cheapie]

uh...it SUCKED dismantling it. putting it back together was even worse. of course, i'm not a techie at all.

[Cantacuzene]

Yes, it's still under warranty, but unfortunately this one doesn't have accidental damage coverage so I would have been SOL.

Maybe you have more scruples than I do, but if I didn't have accidental coverage and I spilled soda and killed my laptop, I think I could "invent" a way to get an RMA on it.

[RoniMan]

nice save jeffbx! at least you weren't like my friend and wanted to do something nice, so she cleaned the laptop....with a MAGNA-DUSTER!!!!!

:disa: :disa: