How shiny/worn are your MBP keys?

[madisonfaye]

I bought the Moshi Clearguard keyboard cover, used it for a few weeks, then stopped. I'm wondering how the MBP keys hold up over time. I've only had mine for 3 months now, and I see no visible wear, but I'm worried that over time it will be significant.

If you have any pictures of your keyboard would you post them? And how long you've had it for.

I'll likely be reselling the laptop, but I find the keyboard cover to be cumbersome, and only want to use it if its absolutely necessary.

Thanks!

 

[TehFalcon]

I bought the Moshi Clearguard keyboard cover, used it for a few weeks, then stopped. I'm wondering how the MBP keys hold up over time. I've only had mine for 3 months now, and I see no visible wear, but I'm worried that over time it will be significant.

If you have any pictures of your keyboard would you post them? And how long you've had it for.

I'll likely be reselling the laptop, but I find the keyboard cover to be cumbersome, and only want to use it if its absolutely necessary.

Thanks!

I Don't think its nessasary, the main point for the keyboard covers is to stop hair, crums, act going under the keys.. I Have a early 2008 mbp and the keys are worn, but since the MBP has the backlit keyboard the Keyboard Keys Letter ink/paint can't wear since its not paint/ink its actual plastic in the key, and when the backlight is on you can even tell they are worn, not needed really unless you eat at your laptop or brush your hair at your laptop/have pets.

 

[randomrazr]

ANY keyboard will wear and go shiny after time.

the keyboard cover will prevent it. u bought it, my as well usse it?

 

[iLog.Genius]

If you can, go to Best Buy or the Apple Store and you can see them for yourself. From what I've seen, they don't get "worn out", instead they go VERY shiny. You have the cover, use it if you're afraid of "wearing out" your keys.

 

[Icy1007]

Wirelessly posted (iPhone 4: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A334 Safari/7534.48.3)

My fingers aren't naturally oily and I always wash my hands before handling my computers. So my keys look almost like they did when I bought my MBP back in February.

 

[shardey]

Clean your keyboard weekly to keep dirt and oil off of it. This should prolong the use. Also the pre-unibody laptops are the ones that had the most problems with wear from using the keyboard.

 

[dusk007]

I have mine for 1.5 yr now. Use it a lot and have fairly greasy fingers but the only key that shows any significant war is the space bar on the right side wear my right thumb always rest/hits.
Am guessing after 3 years the situation will be different but if you want to resell within 1 or 2 years I wouldn't worry about keyboard covers. i don't like their feel. Before doing so I would by some clear plastic sticker. Cut them into the right size and stick them on each key individually. When you remove them with some alcohol after what ever time you use it, it will be as new. And it doesn't make the typing experience any worse.

 

[rekhyt]

ANY keyboard will wear and go shiny after time.

the keyboard cover will prevent it. u bought it, my as well usse it?

This.

Especially if you type really fast, which means that you will naturally type more, the keys will wear down.

The effect isn't that visible, but if you look at it from an angle in light, you will see some brighter shades of black.

Not sure why this happened - I assume that it is wear, since my hands are never oily when I use the computer, but I am rather satisfied, because this is the late 2008 unibody MBP.

 

[hushypushy]

ANY keyboard will wear and go shiny after time.

Exactly. Every keyboard I've ever owned has shiny, smoothed over keys. That's how it goes.

I just returned my late '08 unibody Macbook back to work and after three years, the keys were polished to a mirror sheen. It actually looks kind of gross if you sit and stare at it but I literally never look at my keyboard so I never cared. This is a non-issue to me.

 

[thundersteele]

42 month old MBP (the pre-unibody, with silver keyboard!)

I eat and drink while using the laptop, I don't clean it, I never used any protection. There is absolutely _no_ sign of wear on the keyboard or on the touchpad. There might be some grease here and there, and some dirt, but nothing that wouldn't go away with some cleaning. For two years I played WoW on the machine, i.e. a lot of keyboard mashing. No problem whatsoever.

There is a reason why these machines are a bit more expensive than the average cheap windows laptop. The only thing that has worn off a bit is the lid open button... it's silver coating is mostly gone. This shouldn't happen anymore since the new macbooks don't have a lid lock.