In case of liquid spill

[motrek]

There have been a lot of threads about liquid spills recently and a lot of people do really weird things after a spill, like connecting the charger or putting the laptop in the freezer.

The immediate danger when you spill liquid on electronics that are active is that the liquid will short out something.

So the immediate goal is to turn the computer off, as much as possible and as completely as possible.

Unfortunately the MBA doesn't have a power switch so you will have to hold down the power button for ~5 seconds to force it to turn off completely. While you're doing that, disconnect the charger and any USB devices as quickly as you can.

Then you can work on disassembling it and cleaning it, or drying it out in a bag of rice, or whatever.

But don't turn it back on again until you've given the liquid a reasonable amount of time to dry (possibly a day or two?) or you're just risking a short again.

(In other words, stop trying to turn it on every few hours to see how it's doing. Every time you do that, you risk breaking it more.)

 

[MacBoook160]

There have been a lot of threads about liquid spills recently and a lot of people do really weird things after a spill, like connecting the charger or putting the laptop in the freezer.

The immediate danger when you spill liquid on electronics that are active is that the liquid will short out something.

So the immediate goal is to turn the computer off, as much as possible and as completely as possible.

Unfortunately the MBA doesn't have a power switch so you will have to hold down the power button for ~5 seconds to force it to turn off completely. While you're doing that, disconnect the charger and any USB devices as quickly as you can.

Then you can work on disassembling it and cleaning it, or drying it out in a bag of rice, or whatever.

But don't turn it back on again until you've given the liquid a reasonable amount of time to dry (possibly a day or two?) or you're just risking a short again.

(In other words, stop trying to turn it on every few hours to see how it's doing. Every time you do that, you risk breaking it more.)

I don't want to jinx myself - and I'm going to have to do some preventive juju to make sure I don't - but this happened to me with my early 2011 MacBook Pro a few years ago. Late night, I spilled some lemonade on the keyboard, and nearly had a heart attack. I turned everything off (there were bad sounds BAD SOUNDS) and un MagSafed it; I held it keyboard down on a towel, patted it on the back and with a damp towel tried to get between the keys as much as possible, then when the outside was no longer sticky and most of the liquid was "patted out," I left it upside down on a fresh towel for almost 24 hours.

Unbelievable, it still works. (As you may have seen my comments, I'm looking to get a MBA now, but will be keeping the Pro as a back up). I'm sure that some of the slowness and battery issues I've had over the years is related to this, but all in all, I think you'd agree I was very, very lucky.

No jinx! No jinx!