The Worst Foods to Eat Over a Keyboard

An anonymous reader writes "Pasta? Pizza? Keyboards are often subject to the harshest of conditions -- spaghetti sauce, coffee spill, et al. ZDNet is running a list of worst-food nominations. What is your pick?"

Comments

Coke

[Gribflex]

Every time I spill Coke on my keyboard (yes, it's happened more than once) I've had to replace the whole thing because the coke at away at the circuitry. When I clean off the soda, the solder and wiring come with it.

Without a Doubt

[under_score]

Orange Juice is the most insidious. I spilt OJ on my Dell laptop keyboard. Then I took the extreme measure of using water to wash it out (I didn't take the keyboard off the laptop as I didn't know I could). Everything seemed fine for a few months. Then, gradually, one-by-one, keys started to get sticky. Eventually, about eight months laters, my keyboard became unusable and I had to replace it.

not food but very bad

[xonen]

smoking, and ashes, although not food, are the worst. my keyboards may have survived incidental coffee and other drinks, but my smoking habits costs me about 3 or 4 keyboards/year, especially the area from tab/escape to 4/'r' gets damaged (i smoke 'left handed'), causing keys to lock in the end...

Festival toilets

[el_womble]

There was program on the BBC the showed how potentially dangerous eating at your desk is. They took samples from the journalists desk, and a toilet from Glastonbury Festivals after it had been used/abused for three days (think steaming pile of shit and piss). There was nearly 100x more dangerous bacteria on the desk than on the toilet seat.

Re:Why am I even wasting my time reading this?

[One Childish N00b]

Indeed, why are you wasting your time reading this?

Lighten up, it's humour - granted, /. should probably have a Humour section (perhaps with Python-style cartoon banner instead of the usual logo) so you can disable it in your preferences, but personally, I'd much rather read this than another story about RFID, Google or Steve Jobs scratching his ass in a particular way.

You want serious 'News for Nerds'? There's plenty of other stories on the front page - you could try; - NASA's Plans for the Future,
- Open Source Java? or even
- ASIMO and Research Celebrated in Brussels -
hey, how about that?

Just because you don't want to read it doesn't mean others don't - some of us are slogging through the early hours of cube life and want a little comic relief about how Johnny Slashdotter once destroyed his computer with a kiwi fruit.

Shame on Slashdot for not having a humour section you can block in your Preferences, but shame on you for not only assuming that an article titled The Worst Foods to Eat Over a Keyboard was going to be an accurately-calculated technological critique, but for then wasting even more of your time by bothering to post a comment about "who cares?". I'm here, in a cube-farm, being bored to tears by the most tedious job you can possibly imagine and I'd like to thank /. for bringing a little smile to my Monday morning - trust me, some of us need the humour fix.

$5.99 Keyboard

[John Seminal]

I have had it since I don't know when. I got it out of the bargin bin. I have spilled soda over it, katch-up from fries, accidental sperm from unexpected ejaculation, mayonnaise, just about any food product has come in contact with it. Some nights, I can hear the keys clicking from mice crawling on it licking off whatever food residue is left. And I have even beat the keyboard with 2 clenched fists after dissapointing emails (girls breaking up, getting fired from work, etc). And my cheapo bargin bin keyboard works like a charm. Never any problems.

Meanwhile, I know a guy with an ergo-centric, never going to get carpal tunnel syndrome, wierdo layout with the keyboard split, that he paid $59 for. He has to replace it every 18 months or so. He even has a no food or drink policy in his computer room. And nobody can type on it, not even him.

Keyboards are one of the few things with computers where cheaper is better. Save the extra money for ram.

Re:IBM Model M

[shirai]

I may be going out on a limb here, and I'm usually pretty picky about what I post (I'm a karma whore I admit it) but I just have to speak up. Am I the only one who fell in love with the 5151 style keyboards?

These were the keyboards with TWO square keyapds. That is, there is a full square set of navigation keys instead of the silly inverted-T or plus arrow keypads. In other words, it was like having two numeric keypads with one permanently with the num lock off.

Now, before all of you who are used to the inverted-T scream murder, you should really take a look at how efficient the square keypad is once you learn it. In fact, if you want to improve productivity, I suggest you unlock the num locks and get used to using the square navigation key set.

I know that I can navigate an editor or word processor at about quadruple the speed of the average person.

I can do this because I have access to more navigation keys completely by feel. I suppose you could learn the inverted keys by feel but since they are separated, I'm pretty sure this would be slower.

For example, I can go beginning of line, end of line, beginning of document (with CTRL), end of document (with CTRL), page up, page down, select document (CTRL-5/center key) and enter. It drives me nuts when people left-arrow to the beginning of the line, down-arrow down a long doc (pg down is 30x faster) etc. I just find it too slow.

Yes, I know you can just hit the num-lock key but there was something nice about having the numeric keypad there as well. I know there is also some space savings with the inverted-T, but if that is the real factor, I'd rather not have it at all. Personally, I never use it.

I may be in the minority but somehow I feel like there are other people who have found the magic performance enhancement of havng a full set of nav keys. I just tried putting my fingers on the + nav (microsoft natural keyboard) and my fingers just aren't comfortable. But with index on 4, middle on 8, thumb on 2, and ring finger on 6 with a pinky on enter, I can out-nav anybody. note: thumb for end, index for home, and ring finger for pgup/pgdn and del. Also thumb for ins (though I don't find that I use insert often).

chewing tobacco

[menscher]

Back in high school, a group of us slept over at a friend's house one weekend. And they were chewing tobacco, and spitting into a cup. Then someone knocked the cup over -- right into the keyboard.

We figured we'd clean up the mess in the morning. Turns out, by morning the spit had eaten its way through the plastic membrane that forms the circuitry in cheap keyboards. Nothing there to clean off -- the circuits were gone. Kinda reminds me of a "stainless carpet" ad, where they admit that their carpet can't withstand battery acid, and show a picture of the holes it will cause.

Coffee is another annoying substance, though not for a keyboard. If you spill it near your case, it will seep up into the groove between the case base and cover. And then dry, forming a very good seal. I once spent about 1/2 hour with a knife trying to cut that seal open.

Re:CowboyNeal...

[AviLazar]

My g/f quickly realized the other night that when I am in my Counter Strike zone there is no amount of hooter jiggling and butt shaking she can do to get me awayfrom the key board...well maybe if she brought a friend in but that ain't happening.