Friday, July 15, 2011

Alcohol cures all ills - laptop spills, mouse buttons, etc...

Have you had a hard time keeping contact?

It may depend what you are working with, but in many electronic devices, isopropyl alcohol is very useful. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isopropyl_alcohol

My Microsoft Intellimouse was dying. The left click would occasionally work. I thought about unsoldering and resoldering existing buttons, given I almost never use the forward button, but I gave alcohol a try. Since then the mouse has been working like day one.

Regarding the purity of the alcohol, I recommend a 70% alcohol to 30% water mixture. Sometimes a spill will dry, but the contents will not dissolve in pure alcohol but will in water ie. salt or sugar. That will give a better chance that the contaminated area will be cleansed of the spilt liquid.

It has worked on two laptops and motherboards so far.

1 comment:

  1. Yeah, I've spilled things on my laptop before. It wasn't very fun, that's all i'm saying. Thanks for the tips though. I'm sure that they will be helpful next time I spill on it.

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