My wife and I were heavy smokers, and when we are not at work we spend most of our time in our living room. So anything that has been in that room for more than week picks up a nasty yellow coat of tar and nicotine, including our computers. In the past this has never been a problem, when our older PowerMacs turned yellow we just washed them off with a wet wash cloth and they always looked good as new. When the new G4 iMac came out two years ago, we decided to replace our old trusty sawtooth with one of the pearly white machines. Two weeks later we knew we had a problem, the computer had turned yellow and no amount of wiping would get the stain off. If we had known the the iMac has a porous surface, we would have known better that to bring it into our house. I call applecare and asked how they recommend cleaning it, The only thing the girl would tell me is that smoke damage is not covered by applecare, and that you are not supposed to smoke around Apple computers. I told her that we have used Apple computers in our office for twenty years and never had a problem like this, and nine out of the ten employees I have smoke. All she would tell me is that applecare won't cover smoke damage. Not bad news considering that I didn't want them to cover it, I just wanted to know how to clean it. I posted a message on the Apple discussions site, asking if I could use bleach to clean my yellow iMac. Everyone there told me that if I put bleach on it, that it would eat off the finish. This sounded reasonable enough. My wife decided to get a second opinion and called applecare again, the guy she talked to confirmed that bleach would indeed take the finish off the iMac. So we finally gave up all hope of ever having a white iMac again.
A year and a half later, my wife and I got tired of having a yellow living room, yellow car interior, yellow office, and brown lungs. So we quit smoking (our children and friends were stunned) and started remodeling our house to get rid of the yellow coat. A month later, with a clean house, better lungs, and more energy, the only thing in my house that was still yellow was the poor old iMac, well actually by this time the iMac had turned from yellow to brown. Last night while playing with Photoshop, I was looking around my living room admiring how clean and white everything was, except the brown iMac sitting in the corner. I took a picture of the room then photoshoped the iMac to make it look white again. It is amazing how one dirty computer can make a room look bad. After showing the cleansed picture to my wife, we decided that an iMac with a corroded finnish would look better than a brown one.
One cup of bleach, a box of cotton balls, and countless q-tips later, we have a pearly white iMac, WITH its finish still intact. Now that we don't smoke cigarettes, and have $500.00 extra dollars every month , things in our house will still turn yellow from "other smoke" but a much slower rate than before. I have to say that we are extremely happy that we did not follow popular opinion. As people like us say, "we are as happy as two hippies with a ten-strip of jell tabs, and an eighth of kind"
PS. before bashing my poorly written post, you must understand that I am quite inebriated at the moment, and also take into account the fact that just because I am an editor does not mean that I actually edit anything, and I certainly don't want to edit anything while I am not at work.
A year and a half later, my wife and I got tired of having a yellow living room, yellow car interior, yellow office, and brown lungs. So we quit smoking (our children and friends were stunned) and started remodeling our house to get rid of the yellow coat. A month later, with a clean house, better lungs, and more energy, the only thing in my house that was still yellow was the poor old iMac, well actually by this time the iMac had turned from yellow to brown. Last night while playing with Photoshop, I was looking around my living room admiring how clean and white everything was, except the brown iMac sitting in the corner. I took a picture of the room then photoshoped the iMac to make it look white again. It is amazing how one dirty computer can make a room look bad. After showing the cleansed picture to my wife, we decided that an iMac with a corroded finnish would look better than a brown one.
One cup of bleach, a box of cotton balls, and countless q-tips later, we have a pearly white iMac, WITH its finish still intact. Now that we don't smoke cigarettes, and have $500.00 extra dollars every month , things in our house will still turn yellow from "other smoke" but a much slower rate than before. I have to say that we are extremely happy that we did not follow popular opinion. As people like us say, "we are as happy as two hippies with a ten-strip of jell tabs, and an eighth of kind"
PS. before bashing my poorly written post, you must understand that I am quite inebriated at the moment, and also take into account the fact that just because I am an editor does not mean that I actually edit anything, and I certainly don't want to edit anything while I am not at work.
