Workstations 'Dirtier Than Toilets'

hettb writes "How often do you clean your keyboard and surrounding work area? A recent study (also discussed here) found that computer workstations harbour 400 times more health threatening bacteria than the average toilet seat. If you're anything like me, spending most of both professional and personal time in front of your computer, this is sobering news. "

Comments

Little squishy things living in the keyboard

[ackthpt]

The human bod isn't one of the cleanest things anyway, but what people have done to keyboards would make Pigpen cringe.

Back in the early days when as a programmer/analyst I still got to work on things (now everyone hires 'techs') I was called to a keyboard on an ADDS VP60 terminal which had stopped working. This wasn't too uncommon since keyboards frequently became the home of:

Staples (pulled from pages)

Paperclips

Dust, Hair, Fingernail bits, etc., though usually not conductive

Yecch (you only know what this is if you've taken apart keyboards, others, you don't want to know, i.e. magic nose goblins)

Food spillage

I examined the offending keyboard and noticed some of the caps were wet. When asked about the presence of coffee, Coke, or any other beverage, the user said "no, haven't had anything like that anywhere around it", had anyone else sat there recently, "no, they'd been sitting there for over an hour when it froze up." To everyone's astonishment I then picked up the board by its cord and watched it drip something on the desk approximating: Coffee, heavy on cream with sugar (probably 3 lumps judging by the size of the user) . Those were the days when we could take a keyboard entirely apart and wash it in the bathroom sink, towel dry and reassemble good as new. Sadly, even being trapped in one's own lies doesn't seem to discourage users from keeping a full cuppa near the electrical bits.

Quick question: How much damage to a PC would a good soaking with coffee do? Fry anything?