How dirty are the insides of your keyboard?

[Xpred]

I remember a few weeks ago cleaning out a 10-year old keyboard that has never ever been cleaned once. It had yellow mold, millions of hair, dust, food particles, dirt debris, and YES.... ANTS growing out of it. It came to my attention that ants were growing out of the damn thing, then I realized I had to take it apart, and that's when I saw what was truly inside. I think most keyboards are very dirty, in general.

 

[Lonyo]

Well my house is fairly decent, so we tend not to have ants in the house, so that's not too much of a problem.

 

[Auric]

You dirty beggar!

 

[Vegito]

very but i took them apart and wash the whole thing before... i see people that eat and use keyboard.. its nasty

 

[eXx08]

i want to see pics!

 

[theMan]

one time, i was typing a paper, and a few earwigs were crawling out. it was sort of fun seeing if you could kill them by pressing keys. i eventually threw away the keyboard, it sucked anyway.

 

[Hacp]

TTIUWP

 

[Doom Machine]

well good hygien helps alot ya know, i tend to wash my hands occasionally, if i eat at the computer i wipe my hands after handling my food, its also not hard to at least once a year pull the keys,place them in order and clean the board...i mean cmon, common sense

 

[reallyfull]

I've had my current keyboard for 9 months and it still looks brand new. Every 1-2 months I clean out my case and fan filters with a can of compressed air. I use whats left of the compressed air on my keyboard I also use one of those mini pc vacuums on it. I then go over the keyboard with a damp cotton ball with alcohol on it. I clean my mouse and mousepad (icemat) pretty much the same way. I also clean off my crt with a damp cloth with just water on it. My PC sits about 3 feet away from a Kenmore HEPA Air Cleaner not much dust inside the tower.

I can't say I did the same for my first build that is still running (3yrs old) it has so much dust in it that one of the fans clogged and caused a fan blade to break off.

 

[JLGatsby]

You should buy a new keyboard atleast once every 18 months.

 

[lenjack]

http://www.flubu.com/comics/at-04-04-01.gif

This is hilarious.

 

[Xpred]

Originally posted by: theman
one time, i was typing a paper, and a few earwigs were crawling out. it was sort of fun seeing if you could kill them by pressing keys. i eventually threw away the keyboard, it sucked anyway.

Earwigs? Wow.. holy crap... I thought ants were disgusting enough...

 

[0roo0roo]

i vacuum the thing every week with the brush attachment when i do the carpet anyways, soits not bad

 

[Agnostos Insania]

I spilled milk all over my keyboard one time. It was a black logitech one that had semi-transparent keys. Rather than taking everything apart I just cleaned the electrical parts and such. Some of the keys still have white spots on them. I'd rather not risk breaking the keyboard than cleaning the insides of each little key. It works fine and I paid like $60 for it, I'm not buying another.

 

[ShadowBlade]

pretty bad, not nearly as bad as insects inside it though
I was planning on cleaning it this week. i usually clean twice in one run of mouse batteries

 

[0roo0roo]

its not that hard to take apart most kb though. just gotta find the screws under the feet or stickers. the insides tend to be quite simple. sheets of plastic with printed circuits and a rubber sheet with bumps for the spring. just don't let liquid stay between the printed circuit sheets, it can corode the leads.

 

[Zepper]

I took apart an IBM keyboard once that was being used in a dentist's office and had become flaky. I found that a small spider of some sort had set up housekeeping inside. Once I cleaned it out, the kbd continued to work just fine. They don't make them like those IBM mechanicals any more...

.bh.

 

[Xpred]

Wow, damn. :disgust: I guess they kinda look like this:

http://blog.ignore-your.tv/images/dirty-keyboard.jpg

Woah!... look at this one:

http://www.sketchup.com/forum/download.php/1,4761/dirtyKeyboard.jpg

 

[w00t]

I just cleaned mine not to long with a vacuum so its relativly clean.