Listen to what I am going to say very carefully: I. Poured. Beer. Into. My. Powerbook!

Wait...insurance. What lies can I spin that will help me see this through?

I haven't dared turn it back on, to be honest.

My keyboard smells like a house the morning after a teenager's party.

fuck you, bill!

x-post "act of god" under many policies really is a covered cause of loss. oh beautiful for spacious skies...

...a 15" 80gb powerbook g4.

i've heard of new-for-old but that's new-for-much-better-and-dearer.

It was closed, turned off, but plugged in. It was sitting on an end table along with a glass of ice water. I nodded off and when the dog started barking I jerked awake and kicked the table. The water was only on top of the laptop, outside. I immediately got some paper towels, wiped up water, moved the laptop from table and remaining spill and went about business.

Later, I tried to turn machine on, nada. Left it open and propped up in front of a fan all night. This morning, nada. The water was just on the outside for less than 30 seconds!! It was only water!! I can't accept that this would fry the machine.

The only mistake I can think of in my response was not unplugging the AC cord when I cleaned up the spill, didn't occur to me. But still. . .

Once I fried a laptop with just water but that was directly spilt on the keyboard, while it was on, and this was nearly 8 years ago. Surely modern machines are hardier? My previous laptop was a Compaq and I spilt soda, beer, coffee on that thing and it always bounced back.

WTF?!?!!?

It is a Dell Inspirion and is only 7 months old. I am very sad and bewildered.

There's the problem. I'd seriously try to tell them "it don't work". I doubt they'd be able to see this was caused by water.

I poured beer in my powerbook last night but it was ok.

smells tho

perhaps it was thirsty

my client dropped her blackberry in some beer last night. she asked if "knew anything about blackberries" and if i "knew what she should do".

http://www.tbkusa.com/michael%20landon.jpg

I poured a glass of ice water into my powerbook last week. Did a pretty efficient job of drying it out, it still turns on and I can see all my files on my desktop, but keyboard and mousepad stopped working. Still waiting to hear from Apple store dorks about how extensive/expensive the damage is. ;_;

my friend spilled beer on my power book almost 2 years ago and the motherfucker still works fine

keys are real sticky though

just spilled an entire cup of coffee on my macbook pro.

turned it upside down within seconds and it is hanging over a towel, I'm hoping for the best but assuming the worst. does applecare cover this shit?

no...

how do you get cigarette ashes off a mac keyboard though? some asshole's been smoking in my apartment

with a hammer

my brother just came panicking to me after some leak dripped water into his macbook pro's screen: the internet seems divided between 'put it in a bag of rice' and 'run anything that will heat it up and evaporate the water'. ilx: thoughts?

i just accidentally dumped beer on my mattress.

when i dropped my phone in water a couple weeks ago i took out the battery, opened it, and put it in front of a space heater overnight. didn't try the bag of rice. it works now except the external speaker.

if only I'd done this to my iphone! I have a sinking feeling I've made a two thousand dollar mistake. I did take the battery out and there was coffee on it, that can't be good.

i don't think coffee has electrolytes does it? try to dry it overnight and see how it is. it might be ok!

oh it does. that's not good

can you take the case off and rub the insides down w/ alcohol?

don't know if you've seen this but it (and the comments) look helpful http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/how-to-deal-with-liquid-spills-on-your-mac-laptop/
a lot of people blog about dropping their electronics in liquid, spent a long time learning about this last time :(

Just keep liquid away from your laptop. Period. Get a separate table to keep your liquid on. How many times do people make this dumb mistake and then write about it on the internet?

hey that's some pretty helpful advice, never thought of it before

Just keep liquid away from your laptop. Period. Get a separate table to keep your liquid on. How many times do people make this dumb mistake and then write about it on the internet?

― US EEL (u s steel), Tuesday, December 29, 2009 3:37 AM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark

are you trying to tell me i can't jack off while watching internet porn? cuz if so f u.

You can at a separate table.

taking it to some repair guy tomorrow. apple store can suck it since I guess I've invalidated my warranty. I'll pay up to a grand to get this fixed but not much more than that.

and oddly enough I was in fact moving a cup of coffee away from the computer when this happened. somehow my fingers just gave out and I dropped the mug right on top of it. probably early-onset parkinson's or some shit, with my luck.

Coffee was spilled into my mac and I unscrewed the back and blow dried it. Wated a few days, and it works, except it won't stay in sleep mode.

you want to dry it completely before turning it on. don't listen to that run something hot bullshit

if you can get your hands on some 99% pure rubbing alcohol you could try submerging your innards in that - the alcohol will force the water out (like oil and water) and then after you drain it, the alcohol will evaporate very quickly (NB this is some burnt toast folk remedy shit I have read about on nerd sites)

I found a repair shop in town that is going to take a look and has a good reputation, at least according to yelp, where they saved some girl's macbook after she spilled orange juice on it. they were pretty prompt about writing me back super late at night too and they seem relatively affordable. so fingers crossed.

oddly, just this morning i was thinking, 'i fucking hate computers" and then this happened. shows me.

So, Sunday night my MacBook Pro (and bed) met with a particularly insidious mix of vodka and 'Mezzo Mix' (Coke mixed with Fanta). Didn't realise until the next day, and now (Tuesday morning) I've turned the computer on successfully three times.

Measurable damage:
- sticky keys
- keyboard lighting mostly out
- DVD drive seems cooked (the whirr at the start sounds sick and it spits out discs without reading them)
- startup takes a really long time.
- inexplicably the three-finger swipe to move to the top/bottom of a page in Firefox instantly has stopped working, but two finger scrolling still works.

Would ILX's advice be to pretend nothing happened and live with the changes, or is it still worth taking to a shop (if possible) that might be able to clean it?

Being nice and friendly to Mac genius people will get you very far in this situation. My new mbp took a sugary coffee soon after I bought it (they don't cover liquid damage) but they fixed it for me for free anyway.

my dell has a loose connection and will only charge when upside down

Move to Australia.

I've recently purchased, and am currently awaiting the delivery of, a new 2TB hard drive to replace my now full 500GB. Yesterday the old drive wouldn't switch on. I freaked out so much... Go little hard drive! Go! You can do it! Luckily after some coaxing it switched on. DABS say my order is "processing"... Fingers crossed it gets here before my old one gives up the ghost forever and I lose the last three years' worth of music in one fell swoop. Uh oh...

Bad news: Last night I spilled wine on my laptop. The keyboard seems to be FUX0RED. Fortunately I held on to the keyboard from my old desktop computer, and as far as I can tell everything else seems to be functioning. Later today I plan to make backups of everything on the hard drive.

Question: Can technicians fix this sort of thing? Related question, what would the cost be? (It's not a Mac, it's a low-end PC; a quick glance at bestbuy.com suggested I could buy a comparable new notebook for $270-300.)