another OH NO! spilled water on my MacBook cry for help

[radiosweetheart]

hey there:
moments ago, my fella spilled a glass of water near his PowerBook G4 (the older, metal, 12" screen kind).

As he was screaming in agony, I raced in, flipped it over, wiped it down with a towel. I took the battery out and the memory card out.

we figure about a 1/3 of the water got directly in the keyboard, and it immediately turned off.

I unscrewed all the little tiny screws around the casing thinking that if we could take it out it might save the hard-drive, but I can't pry it apart, so I'm thinking I shouldn't.

Wondering, specifically, about using a hairdryer on it. it's cold here, because it's Canada and our house is freezing, even the top of our fridge is cold (I read here about putting it somewhere warm and dry to dry out)

If anyone is out there on a friday night, please advise!

 

[Will_reed]

So after the water hit the laptop it switched off?

I think if your really worried you should wrap it in a couple of towels and leave it for a week or 2.

 

[Sly]

If it was just plain water, chances are you should be ok. You did the right think by removing the battery. Drain out what you can then leave the PB in a warm dry place (with the screen open) for at least a week. Keep you fingers crossed! If you don't know what you are doing with opening up the PB you may actually do more damage than the water did.

 

[Lawrence Jones]

Water residue

Drinking water has small amounts of dissolved minerals and salts, enough to make electronics very unhappy after the water has largely evaporated. Best approach is to have a competent technician disassemble the unit and apply a proper electronics cleaning fluid to everything, being careful not to dissolve insulating material, before applying power again.

If it were mine, I'd read about disassembly techniques and try it myself. But my curiosity has always overruled good sense, like that time with my dad's watch when I was 10...