The strawberries had thawed, and there was a puddle of juice surrounding them. I was working on my websites, and was finishing up a Text Graphic for a page header. I had just figured out how to get it to look the way I wanted it to, when my daughter came tripping into the livingroom with the bowl of strawberries. She came over and said, "This is how much is..." and then she literally DID trip... Spilling the juice from the berries onto my lap, and a small amount onto my LAPTOP!!!!! About a teaspoonful of the juice spilled onto the keyboard... NOT GOOD! I instantly unplugged it, and carefully lifted it so I could quickly remove the battery as well. Then we got Q-Tips and alcohol and began trying to clean it.

I blotted what I could from the keyboard. It was just on the edge, under the Shift, Caps Lock, and Tab keys (of course the big ones that are harder to get back on!). I popped the keys off, and started cleaning under them with the swabs. The more I cleaned, the more it became obvious that there was stuff under the keyboard, because even though I could not see any more juice, the tips of the swabs kept dredging up more pink. About that time my son pointed to the USB port on the side of the unit, right below the keyboard. There was a pink drip oozing out of it also.

The laptop was less than 6 months old. Still under warranty until the moment that juice hit the keyboard! Since the warranty was void anyway, I broke the seals and attempted to take it apart. It defeated me. The first laptop ever to do so, in spite of my having completely dissected a clamshell iBook and having got it put back together with ALL THE SCREWS IN!!! (For the uninitiated, the clamshell iBook is perhaps the most inefficient laptop design ever where internal upgrades are concerned. They anchored the motherboard to the case bottom, and put the hard drive on top of that, then interlocked and anchored all the other pieces on top of that, meaning you have to totally disassemble it just to upgrade the hard drive! Not only that, you have to open the CD tray BEFORE you shut it down (no emergency pinhole to open it with after it is shutdown), because there is one screw under the edge of the door for the CD drive. They might be able to design one that is more difficult to work on, but they would REALLY have to try HARD!).

Anyway, despite my success with the iBook, this laptop refused to cooperate. After a few moments of despairing pondering, I took to the kitchen and held it over the sink, with the sticky side down. Then I filled a syringe with alcohol and flushed it through where the juice had been, rinsing the keyboard where the keys were removed, and then flushing a little into the USB port that was oozing pink. I left the screen at a 90 degree angle to the base, and tipped it up on its side in the dish rack. It sat that way for about two hours, then I put all the case parts that I had taken off back onto it (keeping it from tipping in any direction that might spread any alcohol that was still wet inside), and set it upright to dry overnight. Alcohol dries fast. I could have done this with water also, but it would have taken 2-3 days to be sure it was dry. I was working on some websites that I needed to finish quickly, so I did not want to wait that long.

In the morning I smelled the side of the laptop, near the ports. There was still a faint smell of alcohol, so I waited some more. After my bath I smelled it again. There was just the usual burned dust smell near the vents, no more alcohol smell (no strawberry smell either!), so I took a deep breath, said a prayer, and put the battery back in. Said another prayer and plugged the Power Supply into it. Said one last desperate prayer and hit the ON button.

It worked! I am typing this on it. There is no telling whether I got all that juice out of it or not. I won't know unless something corrodes and stops functioning later on. The juice spilled on the edge of the keyboard, and ran down onto the USB ports, Ethernet Port, and Modem Port. The modem works. Cannot tell about the USB ports, but this laptop has four of them, two on the side, and two in back, so if one set stops working, there is a good chance the other set will still function.

Juice and pop can cause slow, long term damage if they are not completely cleaned out of something. They will corrode the tracings on the circuit boards, and eventually it will eat completely through them and break the connections. Typically, this will take about 3-9 months to cause problems.

I do not recommend this method of cleaning a laptop, unless, like me, you have nothing to lose by trying. If I did not attempt to clean it, it would for sure damage it more eventually. Since a spill voids the warranty, there is no further risk in TRYING to clean it. Just make sure the battery is out and the power is unplugged. At least this way mine has a chance of lasting me for a few more months.

I lost the graphic I had been designing... But hopefully I saved the laptop.

Update: 2 years and counting since the accident. The laptop still functions well, and has no signs of any kind of failure.

Laura
Firelight Business Enterprises, Inc.
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