Slashdot Mirror
Keyboards Are Disgusting
fredr1k writes "
A test carried out by Pegasus Lab on account for Swedish magazine PC För alla showed that a normal PC keyboard was infected by more bacteria than a normal toilet seat. More specific it contained 33000 bacteria per square centimeter, compared to 130 on a ordinary toilet seat. The tests also showed occurrence of up to 3100 fungi per square centimeter." Also note that unless you read Swedish, you still have plausible deniability when asked to windex yours.
That's funny, it doesn't taste like McDonalds
My work here is dung.
so who's been wiping their ass with my keyboard?!
Yet strangely, people who use public keyboards don't die instantly... Could it be, that we humans have an immune system?
(I always love the HOTEL GERM EXPOSE! headlines, too)
Just wait until everyone puts spittle everywhere from talking to computers.
Laws are for people with no friends.
While typing this, I contracted no less than 47 different diseases.
Quick'n'dirty translation:
###
Recent research shows your keyboard is more dirty than a toilet seat
(2006-01-18 09:20) Do you have some dirt between the keys on your keyboard? Spending a few bucks on a new keyboard might be a good idea. The latest issue of Pc för Alla shows that a keyboard can be a major source for contamination.
By Fredrik Agren
A keyboard holds about 33.000 bacteria per square centimeter - 265 times more than a toilet seat.
The computer magazine PC För Alla has examined what exactly is hiding on a keyboard. The task was assigned to Pegasus Lab, which discovered that every square centimeter contained 3.100 fungees.
Not surprisingly, Enter and Space Bar are the most filthy, as they are the keys we use more frequently.
There are many ways to keep your keyboard clean, but those afraid of catching the flu can follow a simple advice from Smittskyddinstitutets Kerstin Mannerquist:
- Wash your hands when you're done with the computer, she says to PC För Alla.
###
Anyway, remember the findings of Mythbusters?
In the episode Chinese Invasion Alarm episode, while busting the 5 second rule myth, they discovered that the toilet seat is one of the cleanest spots in your house.
www.6502asm.com - Code 6502 assembly or.. DIE!!
Is what's in the keyboard.
damn!
So that's why I always feel better after I get a new computer!
PC for Allah!?
It is clear that the terrorist have indeed already won...
By the way, I didn't RTFA, does Allah use Mac or Winblows?
I reckon it's a nice Mac, and not a wimpy firewire hating Intel one, but a quad G5.
If you don't know what AltaVista is (was), get off my lawn.
Now I'm reading this on slashdot for the third time. New record, perhaps? Or is someone's brain starting to grow fungus as well? :)
Anyway, It's still damn funny. First time I read it it was like a picturebook example of what ROTFL looks like.
The parts that touch the toilet seat are mostly shielded from bacteria by two layers of cloth.
Fingers, on the other hand, frequently stray to the places where bacteria flourish.
It's a hand-me-down from someone who didn't have good eating habits... Either that or he felt obligated to feed his keyboard. I'm no saint, either. I bet we could've beat the keyboards in the study. I'm hoping it works out like the old Simpsons episode, where Mr. Burns can't get sick because all the diseases are trying to get at him at the same time.
"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." -Albert Einstein
I've been carefully cultivating the bacteria on my keyboard for years! They've just started on communication. I'm hoping to have them up to written language in the next year. Then, we'll start on logic. With any luck, I should have my own civilization of microscopic coding assistants by 2011!
there is also lots of semen om my keyboard..
Good thing I already modded my keyboard with a toilet seat.
I guess it would make sense to wipe one's keyboard off, just like people wipe their toilet seats off now and then.
People often make this comparison: "XXX is dirtier than a toilet seat!"
Very bad comparison. Toilet seats are generally disinfected quite often, so should in fact be pretty clean. Keyboards are not disinfected.
Many things are dirtier than a toilet seat. Especially things that get fingers on them all day long. Engage brain and it all becomes quite obvious.
Sparks:Gadget:Beer Maker
As seen on Mythbusters, toilet seats are known to be quite clean. Perhaps some simular tool would be a better comparison, such as a mouse? Why compare a toilet seat, why not the toilet bowl, which ***does*** come in contact with waste?
Makes me REALLY want to wear gloves next time I sit down in an Internet Cafe while on holiday.
Hong-Kong anyone ???
--- 'Pain heals, chicks dig scars... glory... lasts for ever!' -- "Footstep" Falco
in the long term.
A recent study showed that kids who lived on the farm in Germany (or some other European country) grew up with stronger immune systems than those who lived in the cities.
That means the study suggests that they're more resistant to viruses and bacteria than the city folk.
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
If there was ever a study pointing out the obvious, this is one of them. Ever popped all the key caps off a 3 year old keyboard that's had tens of KG of food eaten over it, and several liters of liquids ranging from water to coffee to vodka spilt into it, not to mention the ammount of nutella that somehow gets in there. The gunk you find below those key caps is probably some of the most disgusting stuff you'll ever see in real life.
But I don't know how a lot of people can use their keyboards, especially for hours a day. Whenever I'm in any office I see all these keyboards where the keys have turned various shades of brown and feel rough to the touch. Eeeew.
See:
d .01.html
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0507/04/ac
From June of last year...
ttyl
Farrell
CAN-CON 2019 - Ottawa's only book oriented Science Fiction Convention! October 18-20, Sheraton Hotel, Ottawa, Canada h
I heard about this quite a while ago.
Besides which, didn't the Mythbusters find that the toilet seat is one of the cleanest surfaces in the house (Episode 39)?
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
There was a Myth Busters episode testing the '5 second rule'. They found the same oddity, the toilet seat was the cleanest place (according to bacteria counts) in the whole shop.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
It seems to me that this just points out the way overblown hype against bacteria. Hundreds of thousands (millions?) of people use keyboards every single day, and anecdotally, it doesn't seem like people are getting infections or having other issues (other than things like carpal) at a higher rate in the computer age due to the amount of bacteria found on keyboards (and believe me, it isn't because of increased personal hygene). Now if they further extrapolate and say that while most of the current bacteria is harmless, that keyboards represent excellent carriers in the future for more harmful bacteria, well, that's a more interesting story. But then again, doesn't that just say that you should keep your kb as grundgy as possible to keep those "good" bacteria in and the "bad" bacteria out?
Starting a new job, when they bring you to your cubicle and lo and behold, the machine you are to use is the usual drab beige color but the keyboard is brownish and stained on all the critical buttons. Always bring a package of anti-bacterial wipes with you on the first day and keep them in your desk.
As an aside, I remember back in college, we had the old VT100 terminals with the clear plastic membranes over the keyboard. I always peeled it off and used the keys, figuring I didn't want to catch anything from the membrane.
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
I use my laptop on my toilet. What does this mean for me ?
I worked at this large news organization in Atlanta in the .com newsroom. The newsroom was staffed 24/7 with the stations shared between on-duty webmasters. Our keyboards were covered in coffee stains and what appeared to be dry sneeze droplets. Everyday when my shift started, I spent about 20 minutes wiping down my station with screen wipes (contained alcohol). It seemed that whenever one person was sick, it didn't take long before most of the staff had the same thing. I'm guessing the main vector of infection was the keyboard.
I think it just shows the fact that most bacteria are harmless. Freaks of cleanliness should especially take notice, there's a balance to be struck between chemical agents and bacterial activity. I'd wager that the body is more tolerant to bacteria than it is to Spick&Span.
You know, despite opinion to the contrary, modern toilets are probably one of the cleanest surfaces in the average house.
Though used daily, surfaces are usually cleaned regularly by flushing, and potentially by individual users. Powerful disinfectants are also standard far in nearly every bathroom, whereas less toxic, but weaker disinfectants may be used in the kitchen and elsewhere.
To those disgusted by the potential health hazard present on their toilet seat's, my advice is do not google dust mites before you go to bed.
May the Maths Be with you!
Maybe bacteria laden keyboards are a blessing in disguise.
A few weeks ago I was at a party listening in on some cocktail talk between some doctors and health researchers. They were commenting about how some water borne bacteria was being (they think successfully ) experimented with to boost human immunity. This bacteria is cleaned out water by public sanitation systems.
A few weeks before that my local news had a piece about a girl with a peanut allergy who died after kissing her boyfriend who had eaten a peanut butter sandwich earlier in the day.
The after story commentary mentioned how the number of allergies among teens is on the rise and how some ( only some ) experts were looking at the theory that middle class US life is too clean. Antibacterial this and antibacterial that do not allow young immune systems to get stimulated/strengthened.
I'm not an expert and these things are saw are not hard science.
Just introducing a thought, that as with everything else in life you can have too much of a good thing....even cleanliness.
There should be enough epidemiologic data that we don't have to rely on bogus measures like "number of germs" to try to estimate the risk of catching something from a keyboard. I suspect it is minimal.
I have a bottle of cleaning fluid that that purports to kill 99.something% of bacteria. Does that make me safer? Probably not; instead I'm helping the natural selection process to breed super-bugs that are resistant to antiseptic.
The specious "germ" argument is exactly the same as the one used to compute risk of intrusion by the number of reported exposures in a software system. What matters is infection/intrusion, not exposure. And it *can* be measured, so why bother to measure the bogus quantities?
good thing us geeks are protected from the teeming microbial masses by a thin film of antibacterial (aka cool ranch) dorito shavings and cheeto sprinklin's that reside in our keyboards.
Even better, a laptop keyboard? There must be a better way than holding the whole laptop upside-down to get the crumbs out.
__My Disgusting Adult Video Clips
Consider how many teenage boys masturbate while using their computers as tools to find material to read and look at. Consider the fact their hand is going from, well, you know, to their keyboard, and back and forth again.
I just pop my keyboard in the Dishwasher every few months and it looks like new. As long as it's not to hot and you don't have a keyboard where water can get in between those plastic contact sheets it doesn't seem to cause any damage.
After a while people tend to suffer from 'statistics burn-out' and become innumerate.
I think a taste test (and a tetanus shot) should be an option.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Step two. Get another tissue, scrub away at those keys for all I'm worth, including the gaps between them. Result? Keycaps more or less fine, keyboard as a whole still filthy - I could see stuff at the bottom of the keys.
Step three - the whole hog. To the astonishment of everyone around me at work, I got a screwdriver, unscrewed the keyboard and dissassembled it. More baby-wipes, more scrubbing away. Got tweezers to pull out bits from round the base of the keys. A shcok and awe campaign against the dirt lurking there, no less.
Result? Even with all that, it's still not sparkling clean. IDrastically better of course, but not perfect by any means. Looking at the state it's in at the moment, I'm guessing it will be time for the same exercise again in about a week or two's time.
The keyboard I use here is an MS 'Internet' keyboard by the way - nice enough. I'm going to have to go through the same sort of thing at home soon with an Apple Bluetooth keyboard, and I suspect that's going to be a pain to dissamble.
Cheers,
Ian
http://www.nada.kth.se/~hjorth/krasse/english.html
Don't worry fellow geeksters, by now we have already developed antibodies for those. Soon, pharmaceutical companies will harvest our sweat as a viable alternative to penicillin.
does sperm count as bacteria ?
Toilet seats are quite clean. MythBusters verified it! They found more bacteria just about anywhere than on the seat (didn't check the keyboard, however). I just keep wiping mine down weekly and using a bit of Lysol....
After all, I'd prefer to get into contact with a million normal bacteria than with a few thousand plague bacteria. :-)
No, I'm not claiming there are plague bacteria on the toilet seat
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
IIRC, they actually did do a test to find fecal coliforms in the house and one of the places where there were less microbes was exactly on the toilet seat. They even found some in the kitchen, even tough it was far away.
not surprising. Fungal spores are nearly omni-present in the environment, and bacteria thrive on your skin at all times. Now, given that the keyboard is open to the surrounding air and has plenty of shielded space, yes, spores will accumulate there. But there's a difference between 3,100 fungal spores/sq. cm and having fungus actually growing there. Also, I have to question that number - 3,100 spores is a lot of spores.
Did the article bother listing precisely what bacteria and fungi they found? I wouldn't be surprised if they mostly found bacterial species from the genera of Bacillus and Staphylococcus with a few gram-negative rods thrown in for good measure. Oh, Propionibacterium acnes is probably pretty common as well. With the fungi it's more of a mixed bag, although most would probably fall into the general category of Ascomycetes.
As for catching the flu from your keyboard... Viruses such as Influenza don't survive on dry, non-porous surfaces for very long. Once the viral envelope has dried out, the virus is pretty much inactivated. You stand a better chance of catching the flu from talking to the person in the next cubicle or on the elevator.
As far as I'm concerned, the *world* is filthy, and millions of years of evolution have allowed us to live healthily ( mostly ) in it. It's part of being alive. And the more we're exposed, the stronger we are for it.
I'm not surprised that keyboards are filthy, but frankly, when I was a kid wandering around in creeks hunting crawfish, climbing trees, etc etc I never got sick, and I (almost) never get sick as an adult.
We *need* this exposure. I'm worried for children growing up in sterilized environments today.
lorem ipsum, dolor sit amet
UK News did a story on this last year.
;)
After reading it, I just shook out my keyboard over a garbage can. I think that took care of all the germs
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
Projector Keyboard
A keyboard is a real bacteria core. On the keys there are 33 000 bacteria per cm^2 - 265 times more than on a toilet seat.
It is the computer paper PC för Alla which has had examined what really hides in our keyboards. The labratory Pegasus Lab got the assignment todo the study, which also showed that every cm^2 contained 3100 fungis.
Not unexpectedly is the return and space keys the dirties, the keys we use most often.
There are plenty of ways to keep the keyboard clean, but for the one afraid of catching a cold and flue can follow a simple advice from the Smittskyddsinstitutets (swedish health department) Kersin Mannerquist:
- Everyone must be aware of washing their hands when they get up from the computer, she comments to PC för alla.
We do have immune systems, you know.
(Cue "I have AIDS, you insensitive clod" replies)
Lisa: "I've created Lutherans!"
SiO2
Sounds like a recipe for 33000 bacteria / sq cm to me!
This has been covered at slashdot many times already!!!/ 11/184200&from=rss/ 16/0527259&tid=227&tid=133&tid=1l ?tid=134
http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/04
http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/05
http://slashdot.org/science/02/05/13/1744206.shtm
No problem, That's why I use my laptop in the bathroom instead of in my room.
think how terribly disgusting cheese is. That stuff is MADE OF bacteria. And sometimes purposedly covered with fungi.
Anagram("United States of America") == "Dine out, taste a Mac, fries"
All those nerds trying to grow girlfriends huh?
More practice boys, you'll get there one day...
...they throw the seats in with the dishes!!!!!! http://www.snopes.com/horrors/food/toilet.htm
I didn't think the house band in Hell would play this badly.
it seems I've been reading this in different forms every few years. How often does this study need to be done?
That's a little unfair of a comparison. A toilet seat is actually one of the cleanest places in the average house, in regards to bacteria. It gets cleaned regularly and it's only in use for a very small amount of time each day. So it doesn't surprise me in the least bit that keyboards have more bacteria per square inch than a toilet seat.
Old news, and it should be noted that this magazine is of the type that loves to hype Microsoft products and have articles like "Become a computer pro - master the hidden features of Word!"
A more Linux/open source friendly publication, which also doesn't dumb it down quite as much (though they have fallen in quality the last couple of years) is Datormagazin.
Being bitter is drinking poison and hoping someone else will die
Seriously, I put mine in the dish washer every couple months and have a backup to use while I give it plenty of time to dry out.
It works, although the numbers and letters fade after about 3 times. But then again, I'm not a peeker anyway.
Haven't tried it with a mouse yet.
I had a friend/coworker that sat in the cubicle next to me for about three years. She was also a hypochondriac, even to the point where she slipped and fell on the stairs one day at work because she always refused to hold the railings.
I always came in half an hour before her. Occasionally, when she got in, I would say to her, "I sneezed on your phone this morning," or "I licked your keyboard when I came in."
Good times, good times.
Linux even runs on very old hardware. This can't be healthy.
Don't eat at your desk.. Wash your hands. Invest in a bottle of purell.
My Keyboards are Supper clean. Well i wipe them down weekly with an anti-bacterial.
I work in a tech department and once per quarter we have what we call the "DKS". We walk around to every office, cube, desk and look at the keyboards and mice. If someone is especially dirty we throw away the keyboard and get them a new one(Yes they have gotten that bad). Last month i found a keyboard so covered in epithelials that you could no longer see the printed letters on the keys. DKS = disgusting keyboard search
I work in a level 2 lab here, and sometimes I bring in my Powerbook for taking down notes during a long day of experiments. While it's not necessary to have it sterile (as it stays out on a desk away from the sterile areas), I do clean it superficially with antiseptic to minimise risks of infecting my cells.
A spray bottle with 70% or 90% alcohol and a bit of tissue paper will kill most germs, and also do a lovely job of removing oils and grime. And if you turn your computer off before starting, there shouldn't be too much risk of electrocuting yourself.
Try these for 10 USD
Explains why linux seems to be contagious
So should I spray disinfectants on my keyboard every time I use it.
They called me mad, and I called them mad, and damn them, they outvoted me. -Nathaniel Lee
Sure keyboards are gonna be dirty, what with the availability of pr0n on the 'net... A redundant point, to be sure, but one that bears mentioning.
A friend asked if you could wash a keyboard in the dishwasher. I had never really considered it, but i had a grungy apple keyboard (one of the new white ones) that i had been meaning to replace but kept putting it off... The latest Apple keyboards have a cool window in them so you can see whatever goodies fall down into them. I decided hey what the heck... stuck it on the bottom rack with the keys facing the inside. Ran it on the regular cycle with detergent (Electrasol). NO HEATED DRY :)
When it was done, i shook the water out as best i could, left it near a fan for a while to help speed up the drying process... About 48 hours later i plugged it in, all the keys worked, and it's a lot cleaner than before (I eat at my computer desk, so invariably food drops into/gets spattered onto the keyboard). Also, they keys didn't feel any different (that is, the action wasn't negatively affected), because i have a second identical model keyboard and I couldn't tell them apart afterward.
So, no guarantees.. But it worked for me :)
Oh yeah, test it first by plugging it into the USB bus of something you don't really need...
"excuse me...I have a question..."
"WHAT...does...Alla...need...with-a-PC?"
There are lots of things in your house that are cleaner than your toilet seat. Provided, of course, that you clean the toilet fairly regularly. This is because of the high-powered cleaning agents that are typically used in bathroom cleaning. In other situations, like kitchen counters for example, people use much milder cleaners because they're concerned about the toxicity and proximity to food and such.
In other words, your kitchen counter is probably dirtier than your toilet seat. YOU are probably dirtier than your toilet seat.
Coffee is my drug of choice.
My keyboard may be dirty, yet---- I rarely get sick.
I'm a nerd. I sit here all day. Other than the 'yuck' factor, what's the problem? We live in a bacteria infested world, they outnumber us millions to one.
For those who _insist_ on a clean keyboard, stop fussing around with your damn "pry the keys off the keyboard". Either buy a plastic membrane that you can soak in disinfectant, or get a keyboard you can soak.
Like this one: http://www.grandtec.com/vik.htm
It's $40.00. I can't stand people whinning. Either sack up, and understand that keyboard (as well as Earth) are dirty, or spend the $40.00 and do it the easy way.
Stop bitching about, "I had to pry EACH and EVERY one of the keys OFF my keyboard! Heaven help me!"
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
I think the poster means that the areas that touch the toilet seat (thighs and buttocks) are covered by pants and underpants when you're not on the toilet. The point being that for most of the day your thighs are protected from the environment whereas your hands are exposed to nasty things like messy food, snotty tissue, and garbage bags. Thus you won't transfer many bugs to the seat unless you have bad aim or are a nudist.
While this is pretty gross, it isn't really surpising, and it may not represent a public health issue (I don't know). However, it might be worthwhile to point out that there are normally as many as 1000 bacteria per square centimeter on your skin. Furthermore, not all bacteria are created equal. For an introduction to the normal flora of humans see this reference. Now if keyboards are enriched in pathogenic bacteria...
Laboratree - Scientific collaboration based on OpenSocial.
DUPE!!!
Granted, it has been a long time...
What a misleading article. While it isn't surprising that a high contact, repeatedly used device, with focal points of contact will have a very high concentration of little bugs and such, this is a great example of halfway reporting at it's finest.
The density of bacteria on your skin is much higher than that cited for the keyboard. The fungal density on the keyboard is pretty high, but that's not an issue - your friendly little skin bugs happily outcompete them very quickly. If you want to see a really high density of pretty bad bacteria, check out your GI tract. In other words - so what? Guess where those bacteria on the keyboard came from? Your hands. Or the hands of others, true, but the velvety bacterial sheath that encases us all is pretty much the same from person to person. Unless you've been letting a leper type up his memoirs, don't sweat it.
The only really scary study I've ever read regarding bacterial densities, etc. was one done a few years ago that looked at the density of pathogenic bacteria on various surfaces in the hospital. That was pretty wild, and probably the best argument for hand washing I've ever seen.
I know, we've made some experimentation in biology class about bacteria culture. Since I had my laptop, I took some samples on it. Telephone and keyboards: it's almost the same. A world for small living stuff...
This comes up every few months in a new article, and I'm quite surprised nothing has ever happened with it. Think about it, there haven't been any new keyboard technology to combat this. I've taken to bringing a thing of wet wipes to work and wiping my keyboard/mouse off a few times a week. Ppl used to make fun of me for spraying lysol on my key/mouse, but hey, I have two kidos under 5 at home, I get sick plenty already thank you!
fak3r.com
So what? A walk down the street, with some weed growing in a 500mm x 500mm crack in the sidewalk, with people stepping on it all day, and no appreciable dirt to speak of, is enough to prove to me that where life can thrive it will.
I can't tell you how many times I've been in the bathroom here at work when some other guy comes out of the shitter or steps away from the urinal and just walks out without washing his hands. My friends and I call this "dick door." I used to think my friends were paranoid when they would use paper towels to open the bathroom doors when leaving. Now, I do the same thing. People are plain disgusting. Period.
f m?ID=1765
Not that I'm the cleanest person in the world, but I try. There's a package of anti-bacterial handi-wipes in my desk drawer I use to wipe down my keyboard, laptop and phone every once in a while.
http://excaliburfilms.com/partner/mainaffiliate.c
We had a keyboard at teh first place I worked that we called the sneezy keyboard. I'm sure I don't need to paint you a picture of why. It was used by one member of staff that refused to take a day off work for anything and would often sit there... well you get the idea. For some reason that keyboard was placed on one of the heavily used testing machines so most of the developers had to use it now and then. I wonder how many of use came down with something because of it.
I used to have a better sig but it broke.
It's "Public Relations" from a keyboard manufacturer.
Any honest test would check desktops, too.
And don't put electrically conducting fluids like window cleaner on your keyboard, as the Slashdot editor suggested. Distilled water with a small amount of Dawn dish detergent is okay. Also, electronics must be completely dry before use.
Really old news & was reported on slashdot 3 years back.
I think it was already duped a year also.
So your point is a good one. Any bugs on your keyboard are aerobic and can survive in relatively dry environments. They are likely to be relatively benign.
Pining for the fjords
... continues chewing his lunch while sitting at a computer lab terminal. . .
disclaimer: I've been known to store numbers in my ass for which to dig out when quantities are required.
Sure, keyboards are dirty.
:-)
Now, we don't want to go nuts and spray lysol all over it because you're just giving the more hardy bacteria hiding under the keycaps a chance to take over and make your incessant spraying worthless.
Instead, you should put it in the dishwasher. The heat will kill everything uniformly and it will come out clean and unstickified.
1) Disassemble your keyboard. This means unscrewing the back. Be careful when seperating the front and back halves to not have keys fly all over the place or plastic tabs to snap.
2) Remove any electronics. Usually this sits in the upper right by your Num Lock LEDs and has a cord that runs out of it towards the middle between the halves, or through the bottom half. On every keyboard I've disassembled this board is simply snapped into place and can be easily removed from the front half...
3) Most keyboards either have a rubber membrane with contact switches embedded, a plastic sheet with traces in it, or both, attached by a ribbon cable to the electronics. Definitely emove these.
Set aside the rubber membrane if you have one. This will melt in the dishwasher. Wash this by hand, maybe with a little bleach. Don't attempt to clean the plastic sheet... it's not worth it and it can be easily damaged, destroying your keyboard.
4) If the keys can be easily removed, do so. Place these in the dishwasher in the utencil basket if you have one. Otherwise place all the plastic parts like so many plates in your dishwasher.
5) Perform a full cycle with heated dry with a bit of dish soap. Do not wash your plates in this same load... you'll get food stuck in the crevices of the keyboard.
6) During the dry cycle, check on the keyboard every once in a while to make sure it isn't intolerant of the heat (this can vary from keyboard to keyboard). Some will deform after 5 minutes, others will hold up just fine.
7) Remove the keyboard at your discretion during the dry cycle. Wrap the components in some towels to draw the water out the nooks and crannies. Follow up with a hair dryer on the "cool" setting and/or with an air duster.
8) Reassemble.
9) Test, and enjoy.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
If you are really worried about dirty keyboards, this company makes flexible plastic keyboard covers. Dave Radio MacGuys
wherever I go, there I am.
I seem to recall that a telephone handset has about 25000 bacteria on it, and you put that next to your mouth and ears. We'll all perish when the telephone sanitizers and hairbrush salesmen are sent off on a spaceship along with the middle managers.
Here's the link to a related story from a while ago. Btw, if you're worried about your keyboard then you better not pick up any telephone. ;)
First of all, I'm really not at all worried by all the bacteria/fungi etc on my keyboard, but I would like to keep it looking nice.
It's a given there's going to be bacteria and such... part of life, and really they're pretty friendly to me it seems, but what about dust, hairs, dead skin (gross!) and other less than aesthetically pleasing bits that may wind up on a keyboard? It's not enough to wipe it down now and then.
Honestly, a keyboard has got to be one of the hardest things to clean thoroughly. I once thought of getting one of those roll up membrane keyboards, but just couldn't get used to the feel/response.
Anyone have some tricks they could share short of removing all the keys?
*duh* ... I think we already knew this. ;)
I periodically 409 and then compressed air wash my KB's. The lab ones I do about monthly cause of all the grime from the unwashed masses.
-=fshalor
Tell you what, I'll lick my keyboard. Who wants to lick their toilet?
"If all the world's a stage, I want to operate the trap door." - Paul Beatty
it's simply not worth the effort. Keyboards are dirt cheap (pun intended), and spending 15 minutes cleaning them wastes more time than buying a new one costs. The one at home - that's another story. Mine is a good ergonomic model at about 10x the cost, and I'm not going to throw that away.
Black holes are where God divided by zero
There could be trillions of bacteria on a keyboard but if they're mostly
harmless bacteria you find all over a room who cares? But I bet the
bacteria on a toilet seat are anything but harmless. I'd sooner eat a
million staph bacteria than a single cholera spore!
Otherwise, I don't worry: These are _my_ germs, mostly things on my hands that I've already built up an immunity to or have no way of avoiding even if my kbd was sterile. I won't let others use my kbd, and I really try to avoid using others kbds. A much bigger problem is money and door handles. Lots of people touch them and I could get some new virus/bacterium.
BTW: toilet set tops are often very clean. But less so the undersides where women want men to put their fingers to raise and lower toilet seats! Default=up might be more sanitary.
In my last job, I put in about a year as an intern, then worked for an additional eight years at the same place. By my last year there, I was sysadmin, web guy, dba, and first line tech support dude. Usually, I'd wind up dispatching an intern to deal with tech support calls whenever possible.
One call had me responding to a guy whose keyboard was, bar none, the most disgusting I've ever seen. He had left for the day, and I picked up the keyboard because he'd left a USB device plugged into it. Something like a metric ton of dander, hair, and bread/cracker/cookie crumbs fell out of it.
A few weeks later, the building administrator (read: not my boss) sent me a note explaining to me why I needed (read: ordering me) to go to everyone's keyboard, blow out the keys with compressed air, wipe them down, check every key for motility, and wipe down the monitors. After a brief consultation with my boss, I replied that I trusted our employees to be able to handle those maintenance tasks themselves, although I'd be happy to help if there was a specific problem.
All this is by way of saying: some people just don't think about it, and some people just want it to be someone else's problem. But it's your mess, so clean it up, for chrissake.
Every document or website is just a click away (I have shortcuts all over my desktop). I don't use the keyboard very much, most functions are already provided by my all-in-one 8-button scrollmouse. I guess I should call myself lucky now?
> Two layers?!?
Consider the butt cheeks. In many cultures these are often covered by an inner layer of
1. underpants or
2. boxer shorts
and an outer layer of
1. trousers or jeans
2. skirt or dress
3. kaftan or burka
In addition, some people also routinely cover their butt cheeks and their upper thighs with an extra layer of
1. panty hose or2. tights or stockings
3. petticoat or slip
In colder climates, a fourth layer of cloth is also provided by
1. coat or
2. blanket
> *scratches head*
Have you considered washing your hands after you do that?We are all in a dirty business,
I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.
I'll bet that a half-pint of yogurt or a serving of sauerkraut has more bacteria in it than a keyboard and a toilet seat combined.
Unless someone shows that human disease is actually transmitted by either of them, this is a completely meaningless fact.
(Old joke--old enough to reflect an implicit male/heterosexual point of view, sorry--: "Is it really possible to get syphilis in a public restroom?" "Yes, but it's not the most romantic place to take a girl.")
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
I read an article a while back that came to the conclusion (IIRC) that keyboards were the most unclean surfaces in a hospital. I can say from experience that this is probably true. It would be nice to get some kind of sealed, bacteria-resistant keyboard, but the ones Dell gives us are free, so guess which ones we'll use. The cleanest keyboards are in our pathology lab (where they cut up parts of dead people) because we have those plastic things that go over the keys.
YMMV
Where law ends, tyranny begins -- William Pitt
To expect to have 0 bacteria is to be lifeless.
We need bacteria. How do you expect to digest foods?
Bacteria are not going away.
The logical conclusion is to make a keyboard that you use your butt to type with.
That's vindex, you insensitive clöd.
Much like eating your boogers supposedly gives your immune system good practice, I'd imagine licking a keyboard would be some kind of elite combat exercise for your white blood cells.
Keyboards are environmental hazard.
Coffee stains, bacteria, fungi, sperms... you name it!
A colleague once trod in some "used food" deposited on the floor rather than in the pan by a kind visitor. In a straight fight between one of those seats and my (admittedly festering) keyboard, my money's on the seat.
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
I'll lick the spacebar if you'll lick the rim....
I know you can wash normal keyboards by just sticking it in the dishwasher or putting it under running water, but what's the best way to clean laptop keyboards?
That would explain why everything I write is crap!
OMFG, is it really THAT slow at Slashdot? We have seen these article over and over again, on everything from "20/20" to "The Weekly World News"! Come on!
It may be a "Hardware" article, but it doe NOT deserve front page status!
Great! Now I've just wasted twice as much time complaining about an article I wasted too much time looking at!
</whine>
Sig
Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars
toilets have surprisingly little bacteria since many people don't even sit
on the seat and your butt doesn't really come into contact with anything
during the day - it stays pretty well covered up (for most people at least)
To peoples horror, the drinking fountain was way more bacterial than was the toilet water. But when you think about it, when was the last time they used toilet cleaner on the water fountain?
Likewise, your desk, your keyboard, your chair, probably even your monitor probably all have far worse bacteria counts than would a toilet seat in any regularly maintained toilet area. Put away the Lysol.
I am Leviathant and I approve this message.
One of the reasons I still use PS/2 keyboards is that the keycap covers can easily be removed and cleaned. When I notice the keyboard looking a little dirty, I remove the covers and wash them in warm water and dish detergent. Fifteen minutes on a paper towel and they are ready to reinstall.
Now, if I could just remember where they go.
"Computers are useless. They can only give you answers."
-- Pablo Picasso
I think it's fair to assume that the vast majority of the bacteria of human origin on a typical keyboard belongs to one or two primary users. This is not risky at all for these users, and not even so risky for the occasional guest user. Public facilities, including such things as your typical building doorknob, may contain pathogens from thousands of different people. While quantity of bacteria obviously is relevant as a factor in chance of disease transmission, it is dwarfed in importance by diversity.
I don't think it conducts electricity... why not just poor a bottle of rubbing alcohol on my keyboard like once a day. It'll prolly take only a few mins to evaporate.
Why are people surprised by findings such as this one?
Obviously the toilet seat has less germs. Everyone associates "grossness" with germs in their head. Going to the bathroom is gross, and fecal matter is gross, therefore it must be full of germs and bacteria. Not the case, in fact, quite the opposite.
There are more bacteria on your face, more bacteria on your hands and more bacteria in your mouth than your buttocks in most cases.
Just put in the context of contact with the germ filled world you can see by common sense why this would be true:
Your rear end gets washed and then has very little exposure to germs. Your hands and face are out there all day making contact with all types of bacteria.
So I guess my point is that you can't say keyboards are dirty just because they are more bacteria filled than a toilet seat, because I don't even think a door knob holds up to that standard.
Now common sense would also side with keyboards being rather bacteria filled, but I hardly would consider that comparison to be an indicator.
Judges and senates have been bought for gold; Esteem and love were never to be sold.
UV antibacterial/anti-fungal keyboard lamp anyone?
Who is general failure, and why is he reading my hard drive?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Slashdot readers eat a lot of junk food.
Absurdity: A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion. -- Ambrose Bierce
i've got a black keyboard so I see no dirt.
Pigs incapable of flight due to non-aerodynamic tails.
It's never just a game when you're winning. - George Carlin
According to a recently shown documentary, lack of exposure to relatively benign bacteria and viruses, necessary to train and condition your immune system seems the source of many autoimmune diseases and allergies. Reminds me of an old Granny's adage "every child needs to eat their peck of dirt".
The show then went on to identify a bacteria sourced from clay taken from a lake in Northern Africa, the name is Mycobacterium vaccae, that can be used to retrain / reset your immune system and greatly help with many of these diseases. The list of diseases it helped with included leprosy, tuberculosis, allergies, asthma, and dozens more. Seems this bacteria shares common proteins with many nasty diseases and when the immune system is exposed to this bacteria it gets trained and conditioned, better able to handle the nasty stuff if exposed to it later.
The bacteria is being developed into a vaccine that is somewhere in the final stages of trails and may be available soon.
With the threat of Avian Flu looming near in our future, and no really effective way to treat this flu, I hope this Dirt Vaccine is made available sooner. My understanding of the flu is that most of the damage is done by our immune system when it goes overactive trying to fight the flu virus. M-vaccae looks like the reset button needed to counter this immune system response.
Hope on the horizon, maybe, but will big pharma be able to kill m-vaccae before it gets to us? After all it is a naturally occurring bacteria that they have no patent on.
For more on this Google "Dirt Vaccine" there are plenty of references.
...can an article in SWEDISH garner the same number of posts as one in English. I'm glad to see that we can still have intelligent discussions about articles that only a few of us can even understand.
There is a ton of evidence that when you get a cold or whatever, then you touch something, and then somebody else touches it, that that is the most common way for colds to spread.
;-)
Indeed; and a number of medical studies have shown that the most effective way of cutting down on minor respiratory infections is frequent washing of hands. This is fairly standard medical advice.
And you shouldn't use anti-bacterial hand soaps; that's just a way of evolving resistant bacteria. It doesn't matter whether you believe in evolution or not; the bacteria seem to believe, and they keep evolving no matter what you and I may think.
(Just doing my part to trigger yet anther creationism flame fest here
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
How do you sit on the toilet seat?
I sit like this:
o
|
|
\__
\ ______ ALL SUBWAIST CLOTHING BELOW THIS LINE
|_
...which means my bare thighs touch the plastic.
Ah. The not-bot image, fittingly enough, is 'dirtier'.
Actually, what you state has some scientific backing.
:)
I heard it on the news last year that some German (?) scientist recommended eating nose mucous. As he stated, the nose is the only organ of the body that for the most part does not have a self-cleaning mechanism. The purpose of the mucous is believed to be (among other things) the entrapment of bacteria and other undesirables that would otherwise have entered the body.
By picking, we provide the nasal passages with a method of cleaning to provide new mucous and by -- ugh -- eating we introduce the bacteria into our systems that were otherwise trapped, thus allowing our immune systems to learn about it and, more importantly, learn to defeat it.
I actually discussed this a few days later with a friend of mine who's an Emergency Medical Technician and was a medic in the Army Reserves. After hearing the doctor's explanation, he agreed that it all makes sense. The immune system can't practice its self-defense if it doesn't have any targets to destroy.
Personally, I'll take my chances with the keyboard instead.
The Overrated mod is for reversing inappropriate, positive mods, not for voicing disagreement with a post.
Actually I think you'll find the same kind of levels on phones or any other device that comes in contact with people for prolongs periods and isn't "cleanable" in a real sense.
Keyboards may be kind of an exception because they are just natural collectors of all things nasty with large crevices that are damn near impossible to clean. Unlike the toilet set which is a flat surface made of porcelain and is generally cleaned with chemicals.
I'll take my keyboard's finger-borne bacteria any day over a toilet's butt-borne variety.
Anyone who has been using computers for awhile knows keyboards are filthy, disgusting things. Fingers are the most dirty things on the human body and here is a device you have to touch millions a time a day. It is by design a dirty thing.
I've always wondered why no one builds keyboards that are "dishwasher safe". The actual bits that are electronic and sensitive are quite small compared to the other mechanical components. Just build them to tolerate the hot water of a dishwasher and make those parts "pop out". Toss the keyboard without the eletronic bits into the dishwasher, throw in some lemon detergent and you'd have a pretty clean device. It would probably do a world of good for all of our health and leave the desk in a much cleaner state.
I have suspected that keyboards would be a good place for germs to linger. I've taken to keeping a bottle of purell at my desk, which I use periodically. More-so when I have a cold, always disinfecting my hands after a particularly bad nose-blowing session.
That said, I'm sure I have a bunch of nasties in my keyboard even as we speak.
--
IBM Model M, because I do wash my keyboard.
I bet some are more disgusting than others; owners i mean.
sigs are for losers (except to point out that sigs are for losers)
http://www.joyoftech.com/joyoftech/joyarchives/771 .html
molmod.com - computing tips from a molecular modeling
I'm wondering the same thing. Would it be good to put it out in the sunlight, or through an ultra-violet disinfector, at some regular interval?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
There's always a way to clean your keyboard--the dishwasher.
;)
Take the electronics and screws out and set them aside. The keys, the base, and the rubber pad are dishwasher washable.
Use 1/4 to 1/3 of the amount of liquid/power for a full load, and put it on the shortest cycle you can manage and even then keep accelerating the cycle a bit. You want the keyboard clean but not baked.
Don't put anything ELSE in the dishwasher--you're shortening the cycle so you won't have the power to wash too much. The plastic may be dishwasher safe (seems to be) but you don't want to take any chances with the rubber.
If you have a white or ivory keyboard, note that it may yellow a bit, so don't do this on a keyboard you don't own unless the person fully trusts you.
Note: This doesn't work with IBM Model M keyboards (the clicky clicky clack kind) for obvious reasons, but you could probably take the keycovers off and wash those.
I'm not responsible if you damage your keyboard.
Sound like an opportunity to me. Washable Keyboards you can through in the dishwasher. Especially wireless keyboards. I know supposedly you can wash most keyboards if you open them and dry them throughly afterwards but still, something designed to be washable would be better.
I don't know if I'd put a Model M keyboard in the dishwasher, but most of the 'quiet key' varieties should be fine if you shorten the cycle.
I can believe that the keyboard must be a germ magnet but I have a feeling that the average mouse is probably just as bad. With all the point and click going on it's probably a close second to the keyboard in cleanliness. It might even be worse given that the hand maintains contact with it for longer periods of time than the keyboard keys. Of course the striking of the keys on a keyboard probably dislodges a bunch of parasites where you might not have that problem with the mouse.
Cool. Now I can tell people I have pets.
I am not a crackpot.
Sure, we change the bedsheets, but what about the creepy-crawlies and bacteria living in the mattress? Surely it has to be more infected by them than a computer keyboard?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4481546. stm
surprising but true
Blarney Quality Restaurant, Plants
When I encounter a keyboard in some public place like internet cafe or simply a shared computer at work, it's usually REALLY dirty. So dirty that the keys are brownish-gray.
And although dirty mice isn't such a problem now because optical mice are more popular, in my university library I clean out loads of crap from any mechanical mouse I ever use.
Personal computers are another matter, because if you hate dirty keyboards you can either throw them away or clean them. Nobody will be spending his own time/money on cleaning a public computer keyboard he probably won't be seeing ever again.
My keyboard may be laden with bacteria, but it's MY bacteria. Who knows who's been using that toilet?
If it weren't for my stupidity, I'd be some kind of genius.
I bet my old keyboard is loaded with creepy crawlies. Why? Because it's six years old and never been cleaned. Key logos are worn off, many keys are rutted, there's a gaping hole where the power switch used to be, and food stains galore.
But the sucker still works like a champ even if it is a burgeoning colony.
The parts that touch the toilet seat are mostly shielded from bacteria by two layers of cloth.
Usually I go with my pants down...!
I spilled beer on my MS keyboard so I thought, what do I have to lose, and soaked the thing in the shower. After I let it dry, I plugged it in, and amazingly it looks and works like brand new.
How else would you get back that last bit of donut jelly that dripped down onto the keyboard?
"Default=up might be more sanitary."
Try telling that to a woman that's been dying to pee all day. There's a method to their madness...
I work in a school systems. Toilets get cleaned regularly, but children with all sort of nasty germs tend to pick their noses, touch their various bits-and-pieces, and then tappity-tap-tap away at the keyboard.
Least to say, my laptop bag contains a portable container of antiseptic, and it's used regularly through the day. I've heard various stories of staph infections and others picked up from handling germy computer equipment. Employees of school districts and hospitals tend to get a decent amount of sick days... even without the keyboards and mice they tend to be high on the germ-scale.
These bacteria stories have been floating around for ages. Indeed there is one from 2004 here, on the BBC News site: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/3505414.stm/
My problem with this is that it doesn't matter how many millions of bacteria there are on anything you touch, its the kind of bacteria they are. For example, I'm certain dishcloths and kitchen utensils contain bundles of bacteria, as long as they aren't harmful, I'm not too bothered.
Here is a nice little thing about why E. Coli is both essential to humans, and deadly too: http://people.ku.edu/~jbrown/ecoli.html/
So, how long before they come out with a DX1 style keyboard for toilets? http://www.thinkgeek.com/computing/input/77ba/
It is frequently observed by my coworkers that I am never sick. In light of this recent post, my secret will not last long...
Just another news showing how obsessed of hygiene we are. Dirt is everywhere, in fact, we are dirt ourselves. Nobody wants to get his/her nose rubbed into that fact.
Keyboards are all over hospitals. Many are switching to membrane styles that can be easily disinfected. Some think that MERSA and other nasty infections can live on a keyboard for several hours.
This was a great find for me, because cleaning a standard keyboard with all the crevices under and around the keys is a total pain and would take me 15 minutes to do with a little vacuum and a damp cloth. If you happen to have allergies or maybe have an immune system deficiency, these simplify the process of protecting yourself quite a bit.
Are we talking OSHA sanctioned horseshoe variety seats, or the unapproved ones shaped like doughnuts?
--
MMMM, doughnuts
Considering the keyboard I'm using I found in a box by a dumpster, I'm not really suprised. I have done spring cleaning on my keyboard before though, disassembling and wiping down the insides. Haven't tried using the dishwasher yet though even though rumor has it you can get away with it so long as it's completely dry in the end. I still see it taking at least a week or so to completely dry out though.
Is that you?
Every year, I used to get colds and other illnesses at least 3 times a year. After I started working in a call center where I had to share PCs with other co-workers on a daily bases, I ended up getting very sick at least 12 known times. I mean, I was sick as hell and always drugging myself to mask the symptoms.
The second year of my employment...I didn't get sick ONCE!
If you can build up immunity to a call center environment, than the outside world is nothing to you.
Life is not for the lazy.
Um, is there something "ok" with licking a keyboard that is yours?
:( eeeeeew!!
Just for the sake of the argument, the bacteria you're commonly in touch with (eew), is most probably already identified by your own immune system, whereas the bacteria in other keyboards is most probably not.
In any case, I wouldn't dare to test, my keyboard is all stained with dust, and I can see occasional eyelashes and tiny strands of clothes in-between the keys.
But I wouldn't worry too much about bacteria, but what about DUST MITES?
BTW: toilet set tops are often very clean. But less so the undersides where women want men to put their fingers to raise and lower toilet seats! Default=up might be more sanitary.
You shouldn't publicize this, or the wimmenfolk will have us sitting down to pee.
My problem with the article is it doesn't specify what percentage of the bacteria on my keyboard is *harmful*.
I heard somewhere that a human mouth has more bacteria than a dogs anus. Is that valid argument to french kiss your poodles ass? My mouth may have more bacteria but I'd bet my bottom dollar it doesn't have as much E. Coli (and other nasties).
I have rarely heard such ridiculous tripe. Children play (and learn about their world while they're at it.) If they are let outside they will play outside with the things they find there. There is no such thing as a "Playing outside" gene; how often their children's children play outside lots is related purely to circumstances.
Besides, in your imaginary and nonsensical "Evolutionary" scenario with "millions of years" of human development, virtually all of the children involved will have had _no choice_ but to play outside - or at least in similar conditions since home environments as sterile as are usual in the West are an incredibly recent situation.
Yes - this analysis is just so damn stupid that it defies the imagination!
First: Bacteria need food. The human body slough's off dead skin and hair cells constantly. Some of these end up (guess where) in the keyboard because that is typically where people place their fingers.
So is the study talking about harmful bacteria? Or just total bacterial counts?
If people try to destroy the baterial present in the keyboards then the food supply will build up. Whatever measure is used to "control" the bacteria will be defeated by ever more viralent and hense deadly bacteria.
We cannot eliminate bacteria - however - we can change which bacteria are able to survive in an increasingly hostile environment. Eventually the attempt to "control" bacteria will result in the development of bugs deadly enough to do us in. This phenomenon is present in hospitals where years of over-zealous sterilization attempts have developed super bugs that are virtually impossible to control.
Second: Lets look at the fungii. Fungii need moisture to grow. Most keyboards are used in a dry environment. Thus - there will not be any fungii growing. However there will be spores.
Spores are ubiquitous in the environment. Anyone who doubts this should place a peice of bread on the counter and after an hour cover it with a clear dish. The more technically inclined can use a petre dish.
Within minutes of a spore encountering moisture it will germinate. Within a few days a number of thriving species will be growing.
So to suggest there are "fungii" on the keyboard is both misleading and obvious. As to the numbers - well - fungal spores are ubiquitous in the enviroment. There are probably no more spores present on the keyboard than anywhere else that dust can settle (between the keys). The point is that it doesn't matter.
Third: Perhaps what this study should have done is count the bacteria present on the skin of the people using the keyboards. They would find the fauna is flourishing.
So if we want to keep the keyboards clean then perhaps we sould place the user's in plastic bags which can be disinfected. To try to disinfect the users is going to fail.
Then there is a FORTH issue: We humans have evolved a complex immune system to combat our microbial enemies. It is normal for people who grow up in a rural environment to be constantly exposed to all sorts of bugs. This is especially so if there are animals. However even in the situation where there are few animals - the soil is loaded! All that organic matter that grows year after year has to be broken down and it is the bacteria and fungii in the environment which do this. Can anyone here imagine the sorry state of affairs planet earth would be in if there were no organic decomposition in operation for say the last 1 billion years?
The issue is that unless the immune system is externally stimulated it can go awry and this is one explanation why conditions such as Asthma are on the increase. Examples include the fact that Asthma incidence is lower in rural communities than in urban communities. It has been found that as East German cities started to clean up after the fall of the Berlin wall - Asthma levels started to increase.
Stimulating the immune system is the probable explanation of why meds from organisms such as Mycobacterium vaccae work.
The conclusion is that in trying to sterilise the environment we live in - we cause more harm than good.
What we need is a recognition that most bacteria are actually beneficial. If it were not for the benign bacteria that clean up the food we humans constantly shed from our bodies then the deadly strains would flourish. Some of these strains are quite capable of doing us in.
So as far as those "dirty" keyboards go. Well - there is food there so it is pretty natural that there will be consumers.
What? Mice have dirty balls? huh?
Iam greatly in awe that you never get sick as an adult !! As a adult ,I get sick once in 3-4 months either with cold/fever ! hmm...wish I could have a immune system like you..
Why does yahoo do this
all slashdotters turn into obsessive-compulsive psychopaths!
- Let us fight together for a patent-free EU.
NT
I'm curious to know how much is on the mouse. The article mentions that there is more bacteria and/or fungii on the enter and space keys because they are used more often... I use my mouse a LOT more than my keyboard...
Considering that the toliet seat is, in fact, one of the cleanest parts of a house, telling me that my keyboard is dirtier that it isn't that alarming. If you told me that my keyboard was as dirty as the floor beneath a urinal I would be alarmed. Furthermore, telling me that my keyboard contains 33000 bacteria per square inch means nothing to me, I am a computer science major not a micro-biologist. I have no idea of what a normal amount of bacteria is. Therefore by telling me that my keyboard is dirtier than the cleanest part of my house tells me nothing. Also telling me how much bacteria there is on it without giving me an idea of what a normal number is, tells me nothing. Therefor this article says nothing! Please e-mail me a few minutes of my life back!
Does it come from urine? Urine is sterile. I've seen videos of surgeries where the ureter between the kidneys and the bladder was severed, and the surgeons allowed the urine to flow directly into the body cavity. Old urine will harbor germs, true. This is why we flush toilets and wipe the seat if we get a little bit on it.
Germs grow in certain locations because those locations are not cleaned. Toilets are cleaned often. Keyboards are rarely cleaned. Why are these results a surprise?
If you are worrried about bacteria and fungus - don't go in the kitchen or the bedroom!
Kitchen counters have 400 times more bacteria than the toilet seat. Office desk only has 100 times more bacteria than a toilet seat !
Fungus - want fungus? - just go to your pillow
I cleaned mine off a little bit ago after a couple years of use. Check it out: www.dbarbour.com/photos/?page=7. Tell me that's not disgusting.
What is your penile percentile?
Resistance to bacteria etc. and their spreading is considered with paper money - material is chosen to minimize such risks.
Yes it does.
PC keyboard was infected by more bacteria than a normal toilet seat.
Ah, this explains why there is so much crap on the Internet. I wonder what other organisms they would find a typical slashdotters keyboard?
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
> Wash your hands when you're done with the computer
> she says to PC För Alla.
that's exactly wrong -- if you only wash them when you're DONE,
then the accumulation on your keyboard will be the greater, because
you're contributing to the greasiness of the keyboard by bringing it
whatever is on your hands when you begin. -- oto, if you start out with
a clean keyboard (don't need to buy a new one, just clean with rubbing
alcohol) -- then simply adopting the habit to wash your hands BEFORE
you use the keyboard will keep it from building up as much. that habit,
and periodic cleaning w/rubbing alcohol will change things substantially.
2cents
j.
Why not post any of the 50 other articles on this same topic... in English?
DAMMIT! Foiled again!
I'll go get the bleech....
Google, dictionary.com, and wikipedia turn up nothing substantial. I'm assuming it has to deal with someone named Diggs, but there seems to be a lot of those.
So... what is diggsian?
So does that mean we should start using our keyboards to take a dump instead of our toilets?
Keyboards are nearly impossible to clean. I basically buy a new $7 keyboard (currently using an Inland)
-- Betting on the survival of the media industry is a serious risk. I advise investing elsewhere.
If we weren't in Iraq the nation could focus on protection from keyboard bacteria. Recent studies by some guy from Berkeley say that global warming will cause the "Keyboard Problem" to explode. The letter "P" may be lost for ever......
Don't kill them, they love you!
Adamobacteria keyboardium is a common magical bacteria that loves keyboards, because geeks pay so much attention to it there.
... are absolutely sterile and surgical. :)
James P. Barrett
You use your fingers to lift toilet seats? Good God, man - that's why shoes have cleats. If a woman wants me to lift the seat each time, then she can darn well sit on my footprints.
Next you'll be telling use that you don't flush public toilets by stepping on the lever, and we'll all laugh at you.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
So I can take 2 seconds to lift the seat (with the side of my shoe; see post above), but she can't take two seconds to put it down? Title IX says that they can put the seat down just as easily as we can lift it.
Unless we're talking about my wife, in which case all of the above (especially the part about feet) was all in jest, and I would never use the toilet without cleaning the whole thing with Lysol afterward for your butt's convenience. Honest.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
I thought that was what the flusher was for!
"PC För alla?"
Are you sure that isn't some Muslim political correctness site?
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
two words: Board chow.
http://www.inktank.com/images/AT/cartoons/04-04-01 .gif
-J
I think not...(*poof*)
than the number of bacteria. I regularly have to swallow capsules containing billions of Acydophylus bacteria...
Oh well, what the hell...
Oh, I'd imagine the keyboard to be much harder to eat :)
Oh mamma! http://www.cherrycorp.com/english/cymotion-line/po pup_layout_cymotion_master_linux.htm
Well, one would think that every geek will be able to get a keyboard cover at his primary place of employment for free - Yah want fries with that?
Oh well, what the hell...
Porcelain keyboards, anyone?
Apparently Fellowes has already taken care of this problem (http://www.fellowes.com/Fellowes/site/products/Pr oductDetails.aspx?Id=98914)
Besides all the valid points about hands expected to be bacteria-ridden, stock keyboard designs seem almost designed to accumulate filth. The separate keys, with plenty of space between and underneath seems a little undesirable from a cleanliness point of view. Obviously the solution, if you're worried about the bacteria, especially for shared/public computers is to use the "flat" pad-type keyboards and disinfect regularly.
Subject line sez it -- t'woulda been a much-improved title. Maybe I'll make a t-shirt anyway.
You do realise that the human being has more bacteria in their mouths than any other species tested so far - this includes komodo dragons, which, with one bite, can kill you duue to the bacteria in their mouths, think about that for a change...
How about we reconcile your nuts theory and the "bacteria strengthen the immune system" by putting forward the hypothesis that:
When nuts are introduced into an untrained immune system (untrained because it hasn't encountered many enemies), then the immune system will (often) target them.
I'm still trying to figure out what people mean by 'social skills' here.
Wiping their ass with it? Probably nobody, but if you're my boss, I was definitely teabagging it this morning while you were on your 45 minute coffee break.
Freedom: "I won't!"
.. they aren't all that disgusting, I can't really imagine the ratio bacteria that really gets on one butt cheeks as opposed to their hands. The most of the disgusting bacteria would probably come from urine that gets caught on it.
Even that dries up and evaporates over time and doesn't happen on most toilet seats since either men put the seat up, or they're using the urinal.
So, are toilet seats really that unclean?
My keyboard is my toilet seat, you insensitive clod!
I'm not surprised that keyboards are filthy, but frankly, when I was a kid wandering around in creeks hunting crawfish, climbing trees, etc etc I never got sick, and I (almost) never get sick as an adult.
When I was a kid, wandering around in creeks and hunting crawfish, etc etc I got sick 3-4 times a year. That continued into adulthood.
I'm not saying you're wrong with the implication that you can "train" your immune system, I'm just saying that you can't draw a conclusion based on a sample size of one.
Caused by disconcerned individuals about personal hygiene. Do you touch your keyboard with toilet hand?
I use a little spray bottle similar to this filled with rubbing alcohol. You just periodically spray the keyboard.
that means the boy in the plastic bubble cant post lame comments on slashdot? *grin*
but seriously
a bit of harmless bacteria is good for you, it strengthens your immune system. that is why auto immune disorders are on the rise, because as kids we have no harmless bacteria to fight against because our moms use anti bacterial wipes and soap, and anti bacterial cleansers for everything from dish detergent to fabric softener. I have a friend who's mom is so anti bacterial this and that, that when he hit a bug when out bike riding the bacteria on his skin, the stuff that is supposed to be *Harmless*, but had been killed off and replaced by stronger more powerful *EVIL* bacteria by the antibacterial soap his mom insisted on using for the last 20 years, that nearly killed him.
He had to be admitted to the hospital for the big gun IV antibiotics to kill the damn bug that got beneath his outer defences because his immune system didn't know how to deal with it.
The new generation of superbugs that don't respond to normal antibiotics, new generation of autoimmune disorders and a new generation of kids growing up in a shiney new sterile world with diseases (tuberculosis for example) that we used to be able to treat coming back to haunt us with triple immunity to antibiotics that used to kill them dead because we put antibiotics in the feed of animals *just in case* that leach out into our water supply. whee. shiney new world order.
-m
-Magdalene --"there are 10 types of people in the world, those who read binary, and those who don't"
Oddly there was a recent report on the bacteria on common household items.
... the toilet seat. Yes, it was cleaner than anything else. ... but it's better to eat your dinner from the toilet seat than the table".
And the winner was
The researchers went "eeew
I can't remember if they then a) demonstrated, or b) refused to and slunk away.
In Soviet Russia, toilet seat sit on you!
"Cats like plain crisps"
Great, there's at least something in my life that will continue to keep my immune system going!
Jeez, if so many bacteria can be found on the keyboard, what about the mouse? Yuk!
Years ago I worked in a shop that bought and resold Mac computers, and it was routine to partially disassemble and clean the keyboards.
After removing the keyboard's circuit/mounting board from the housing, I would run a toothpick or bamboo skewer between the keys to get the dust and hair out, and then use lots of water, cleanser spray and a toothbrush to get the finger grease and crap off the key caps. A vigorous rinsing helped flush the rest of the crap out from between the caps as well as get the cleanser out. Depending on what we were buying in, I could be doing this for a couple dozen keyboards in a week of part-time labor in addition to usual duties. I got pretty efficient at it. And we never had a keyboard returned for problems that could be traced to the cleanup.
Since hardly anybody makes mechanical-switch keyboards any more, the problem is a little different. These days the keycaps for full-size keyboards are mounted on top of large sheets of moulded plastic that pop up and down to close connections on circuit traces. The big advantage of the better-designed ones is that moulded plastic keeps liquids away from the electronics. The disadvantage of all of them is the sheet of moulded plastic traps liquid that gets underneath it. I've seen membrane keyboards that are corroded to death. I doubt water alone will do that, but it can certainly contribute to irregular short-circuits for weeks. The upshot is that a quick wash and rinse can never hurt, but only if you're willing to leave the thing to hang dry for at least a week, which means you'll have to replace it anyway if you need to use the computer.
Laptop keyboards are a special case. I have no idea how they make them these days. I never keep an uncovered glass of drinking fluid on the same table/desk surface I'm using a laptop on because its keyboard can't be treated as a $15 part.
The Apple Extended II keyboards were rock solid, and you can't use those any more without an ADB-USB adaptor. On the other hand, if you're slightly handy with a soldering iron you can buy two of them for three bucks at a yard sale and replace any keyswitch that fails, and have a Mac keyboard that lasts the rest of your life. If I didn't find contoured keyboards easier to use, I'd consider it, because as a long-time touch typist I think the feel of those things is like gold. Old IBM keyboards are also great, unless you're the poor sap sharing the cubicle with a guy who brings his own clicky board to work every day.
Incidentally, there were always pools of Coke/Pepsi, sometimes deep enough for the keys to stick down, but rarely beer. And while we've found plenty of food chunks and tobacco ash, I can only think of one time we got a keyboard holding marijuana seeds and bits of bud. It went down the drain with the other digusting carriers of bacteria.
This is late, and could be redundant. Oh well.
This isn't all that surprising considering the only thing that really comes into contact with a toilet seat is one's ass. In modern society we all run around with our asses covered by at least one layer of clothing, if not two or more. So it isn't a good collection/deposit point for the average nomad germ. The hands however, are rarely covered, and often come into contact with things that other germ carrying hands will touch(read deposit germs onto). We sneaze into our hands, and then go on to touch light switches, doorknobs, handrails, etc. Which countless others will touch, and countless more have already touched. So we drop a couple germs, while picking some up. So, our disgusting hands deposit all these germs onto the keyboard . . .
Maybe this would be a little clearer if somebody did a test of the germ content of the average ass(gleut area only, the sphincter cant count it doesn't come into contact with the toilet seat, at least lets hope not) versus thast of the averag hand. I am willing to bet the ass turns out to be cleaner . . .
I was waiting for someone to mention the Model M. Mine (the one I'm typing this message on) is a 1988.
Just keep some cotton balls and a bottle of rubbing alcohol on the desk. Swab off the keyboard and mouse once a week. Q-tips are handy for the spaces between keys.
(Reality reasserts itself sooner or later.)
that's because nerds/computer geeks are gross.
... tell me just how much money they spend to find out what there's ten copies of in every Jr. high science fair?
Keyboards are the new doorknob. Swab them onto a petrie dish, add project board, voila - instant redundant science fair project.
OK maybe the kiddos don't all do serial dilutions and colony counts, but it's scary nonetheless.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
Mark my words:
One day the dust mites will rise up and overthrow us while we are all asleep.
-K
actually the "average face" holds more bacteria than ANY any of your other body parts. toilet seats are a. too cold and hold b. too little nutrient solution for bacteria to feast on. so if anything you need to be disgusted of your face. i bet keyboards are only dirty because we constanty touch our face and then the keyboard again!
next to that, i very rarely become sick, when staying at home infront of my pc. maybe it's like with folks that live on farms. they usually do have quite good immune systems.
You're dead wrong. Model Ms can go in the dishwasher quite easily, and come out squeaky clean. I've done so many a time, and my keyboard thanks me. Incidentally, this is why Slashdot is so poor -- uninformed idiots acting as though they know something.
This reminds me of a thought I have had recently.
The faucets are maybe the most dirty objects around. They are always touched with the dirty hands of the people that intend to wash theirselves. The irony is that we always touch them after we wash our hands and we go away thinking our hands are clean...
Yesterday my brother told me that his attempt to purchase a circa 1900 wool carpet for a curatorial display (hand-made replica from England) was turned down by the provincial office on the grounds that it was "more expensive per square foot than the carpet in the premier's office". What a shock to discover that my keyboard has more bacteria than the premier's toilet seat. Yet not once in my life has anyone passed along to me any qualitative information on how much illness is passed along from toilet seats. The only factoid I've come across was a study that neat-nick cooks (mostly women) managed to spread salmonella almost everywhere when cooking raw chicken by swiping every surface with the same unbleached rag. But why worry about chicken, we can't catch anything from birds. Let's worry instead about the bacteria we are all catching from each other every day. It makes for a better sound bite.
I bet the average refrigerator door handle has even more bacteria than my keyboard and the toilet seat in the premier's office added together.
the title says it all.
... how many sperm does an average keyboard have per square cm, and for how long are they alive?
I want to play Free Market with a drowning Libertarian.
I tried this on a couple different keyboards and it didn't work either time, my latiturd and thinkpad were not the same afterwords.
Cheap storage VM.
Okay, now I'm confused.
what about those of us who type with our buttocks?