Save your Laptop from Beer, Coffee and Soda Spill

Now, it strongly depends on the particular laptop you have , since some laptops are more vulnerable to damage from a spill on the keyboard than others. This is not a price related vulnerability. Just that some laptop keyboards have a thin rubber membrane beneath the keys that helps you in such kind of situations. To know what type of laptop you have, take off the top of a key and look for yourself. When shopping, ask the guy at the store, he will know for sure if a particular laptop has such a membrane or not.

Of course that nothing saves your laptop batter from liquid spill than the fact that you keep your laptop…away from liquids. Keeping the coffee cup close to your computer is not a good thing…even if as I write these words down I keep the coffee cup right between me and the keyboard…bad habits die hard, right? OK,I moved it…There are more situations, when you spill water, or spill coffee, wine, soda. Water is better than any other of the above mentioned, because you just dry it with a cloth or something and if the laptop was not electronically damaged, it will be ok after a short while. It gets worse with coffee or soda, since they get sticky while drying, so if you spilled some coffee on your laptop keyboard, it will probably start to not work well, key will not come back after pressing them, or keys that will not type anymore.

Ok, let’s say that you just did it! You spilled liquid on your laptop. First thing, if it is plugged, unplugged it! Fast! You would not want that an electrical circuit mix with liquid right?Then if your laptop keeps on running on batteries, turn it off.

If it seems to run normally, without smelling burnt or seeing sparks or anything else, shut it down in the normal way. But do it fast. Otherwise, if it smokes or you notice any unusual behavior, remove the battery as fast as possible or turn it off by using the Off button.

Ground yourself by touching a metal part of an other object touching the ground. Note: the metal part must reach the ground.

Disconnect any USB , serial (or any other port) devices that may be connected to your wet laptop Remove any plugged-in hard drives, CD/DVD drives, remove the memory modules.

After this, consult the technical book of your laptop to see how to handle the keyboard cleaning (by removing each key top and clean it individually).

Put the laptop on a higher surface, on some books, just to have the laptop touching a smaller surface as possible, to let the liquid dry. Let the screen open and never reassemble the laptop until everything is completely dried. For this, leave the laptop on an air flow for at least 1 full day.

If anything seems not right after reassembling the laptop, I strongly suggest you to go to a laptop repair shop to ask technical analysis of a specialist.