As computers, particularly laptops, have become a part of daily life, people have become more abusive in using these tools. When laptops cost thousands of dollars, they were treated lovingly. Those symbols of prestige were carried by only a few, and every effort was taken to keep them in pristine condition. Once the laptop became a commodity, that’s when filthy keyboards and grimy screens became the norm.
Now, if someone chooses to make a laptop so dirty that it looks like it belongs in a barn and not in a living room, that’s okay. The problem though is that people are taking their muck encrusted machines to service centers and demanding service covered under warranty to fix the mess they’ve made. These are not just personal laptops mind you, but business computers, too. A laptop’s warranty covers manufacturing defects. Spilling cola into a laptop isn’t a manufacturing defect. It’s stupidity. No warranty covers that.
A couple of weeks ago a friend brought me a lovely Toshiba Tecra A9. Although it’s a few years old, the A9 is still a nice machine. The laptop was actually a business machine that had been assigned to an executive who decided to let his children use it whenever he was home. After he was fired for poor performance, the executive dumped his assigned laptop with the company’s administrative manager and stormed out of the office.
Later that day the company discovered that the laptop was damaged. I agreed to take a look at it and see if the notebook was worth repairing. Fifteen minutes after I began the diagnostics, it was apparent that the only problem with the laptop was the malfunctioning keyboard. One by one, I gently popped the key caps off the keyboard. Long fingernails are very useful for this task. Underneath the key caps, jammed into the plastic hinges that act as springs, were dozens of sesame seeds. Bits of bread and green sprinklings completed the picture. The poor Tecra A9 had endured a za’atar attack. Compressed air wasn’t enough to clear out the sesame seeds. They had to be pulled out with tweezers. Some of the plastic hinges were broken because they’d been forced down on the sesame seeds, but those were easily changed. Two hours later the keyboard was back together and the machine was operational again.
In the United States, some businesses have begun giving their employees a laptop allowance. The laptop is the employee’s property and maintaining it in working order is the employee’s responsibility. With the move to cloud computing this will likely become more common. Over the past couple of years, some large companies in Saudi Arabia have been demanding that to win their contracts, PC hardware vendors must repair their laptops during the warranty period — regardless of the reason for the malfunction. This is actually a ridiculous way to deal with property abuse since it’s costly to have to cope with essential equipment that’s out of order.
One solution to the crumby problem is the use of a silicon keyboard protector skin. These skins mold perfectly to the keyboard to keep crumbs, dirt and liquid out of the machine. They usually cost about SR40. The protectors are easily removed and can be washed and reused. When applied to a keyboard soon after purchase, a keyboard protector skin will keep the laptop looking and working like new.
What do I do? At home or in my office, I connect a USB keyboard to my laptop. That way, if any sort of catastrophe occurs — such as tea dripping into the keys — I just clean or replace the external keyboard. My laptop is never damaged and I use a keyboard that is far more comfortable and ergonomically friendly than the small keyboard available within the laptop.
Some laptops come with sealed, waterproof keyboards and those are great for kids who take their computers everywhere. But such keyboards can be less than ideal, especially for long hours typing documents or e-mail. So, slap on a keyboard skin, connect an external keyboard or just stop eating while typing. Give your machine a little protection so it keeps working for you.
