I promised a couple of spill stories today and I'll get to them in a minute. First I wanted to answer some of the questions that popped up in the comments. Does one lose the system guarantee when one removes the keyboard to clean it? Removing the keyboard in itself does not violate your warranty. At the same time, spills are not covered by our standard warranty. If you spill on your system, it is likely that you would be responsible for any repair charges. On the other hand, you might also think that if you have to pay repair charges anyway, it might be worth trying to clean it yourself. In all cases, use common sense. If you're unsure of what you're doing, give our tech support a call. The drain holes are too small to be useful. They must be a marketing thing... We walk a fine line with the size of the drain holes. If they are too small, then they don't work effectively. If they are too big, dirt and dust get inside the system. To help with this, our Roll Cage has built in reservoirs. They are designed to handle more liquid faster, so that the spilled liquid has more time to drain. Here is a picture with one of the reservoirs outlined in red:
We've had interesting things spilled in our notebooks. In office environments, coffee is common, as you would expect. We also have a lot of K-12 students using these notebooks. One of our business partners who does warranty work for us shared with me that the most common spill he sees in K-12 is wine spills -- specifically red wine. When mom and dad are helping with Junior's homework, it seems that they are downing a glass or three and dumping the remains on the notebooks. It leads me to wonder as to the quality of the help Junior actually receives. There is a fairly legendary story in our service and support department where a guy called up to get his laptop serviced. He didn't mention that his cat sprayed all over it in an attempt to mark its territory. Upon arrival at the service depot, they figured out pretty quickly that this wasn't a run of the mill spill and the notebook was returned unrepaired in a biohazard bag. College age students generally spill beer into their systems. Sometimes coffee. It all depends on whether they're up late writing papers or using their systems as music machines at parties. From listening to customer stories, I've determined that company executives generally spill black coffee while worker bees generally spill coffee with milk and sugar. Computer coders generally spill Mountain Dew. Housewives, tea. If you do spill on your ThinkPad, what you do next will directly affect the extent of the damage.
- First, don't panic. The natural inclination is to reach over and turn the system over as quickly as possible. This is the worst thing you can do because it can spread the spill around.
- Reach over to the power button and hold it down to turn your system off. Don't do a normal shutdown. Just turn it off. Then unplug the power from the system.
- Wait a few seconds to allow the drainage holes to do their job and allow as much liquid as possible to drain from the system.
- Pick the system up, keeping it level. Once you have lifted it high enough, briskly turn the system upside down so that the keyboard is facing down. Allow the system to drain as much liquid as possible. Give it a gentle shake or two and let it sit that way for a few minutes.
- Call Lenovo support and ask what to do next. If you are the DIY type keep reading, but if you have any doubts whatsoever, give us a call.
- Take the keyboard off and determine the extent of the spill that has seeped into the system. You can also rinse the keyboard you removed using distilled water and use a hair dryer to thoroughly dry the system.
- I've personally heard accounts of people taking their keyboards off their systems and running them through the top rack of the dishwasher when they have really sticky spills. The water jets are able to clean the crevices better. Lenovo absolutely does not support this, but if you are faced with having to replace a keyboard anyway, what have you got to lose? Use the top rack because the heating element gets too hot and you don't want a pile of goo at the bottom of your dishwasher. And for Pete's sake, don't think you can run your entire system through the dishwasher.
Feel free to share your own stories if you have them.
