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Nicotine Stains on shiny eMac...

wowser

wowser

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jan 25, 2004
895
0
Inglaterra, Europa
Some of my flatmates smoke , and as I often have my door, open, my room also gets a little bit smokey - not much, but after a couple of cigs or so... How much build up do you think there would need to be before my eMac started to get yellowy stains? (especially the keyboard)?
 
Those kinds of stains are pretty much permanent. Thats what happens when you do stupid **** like smoke! You can get a new keyboard...Thats the easiest way to get a white keyboard back.
 
As long as you don't let them smoke in your room then it should be fine, a little bit of smoke won't really do any damage. If you make it a habit of once a week giving it a wipe then you'll probably not really have any issues. Smoker's PCs go yellow because the smokers chainsmoke whilst working through some stressfull work and blow their smoke directly at the pc or mac. Computers don't yellow as much anymore anyway, it was the beige plastic of yesteryear's computers that really suffered at the hands of smokers.
 
The eMac will definitely get yellow over time, if not the white part then the clear part in back where the air gets sucked in. Seen it myself on an iMac G3 in the same house as a smoker, the clear handle area is just yellow, and that's with the smoker not even in the same room most of the time, and no fan inside the iMac. There are commercially available products intended to remove nicotine stains, but I have no idea how well they would work on plastic. (One is called Tar-Gone or something similar)
 
I've got an iMac G3 sitting at home where my flatmate lives who's a heavy smoker (cutting down now, thank God) and I haven't noticed any yellowing on it. I would have noticed if there had been because I went round everywhere checking for smoke damage. As it is he has to help me repaint the whole flat because of all the yellow smoke damage!! And as of next week he's banned from smoking in the flat.
 
I'd say there was heavy smoking in the flat a couple of time a week. A real worry, as these people aren't even my freinds, and I fell like chump asking them to not smoke.
 
Close the door, open the windows. If you're really worried, buy a small fan and point it at the mac. It really shouldn't yellow too much. Yellowing in a low-smoke levelled environment takes *years*.
 
I find it really rude when people smoke infront of me (ecspeccaly when they dont ask if its alright). Im very sensitive to smoke and my eyes will get all red and my nose will start to sniffel. I would just ask them to not do it in your room 1. its not good for your health 2. not good for theyre health 3. not good for your eMacs apperance. :p
 
Any one for a green Apple?

wowser said:
I'd say there was heavy smoking in the flat a couple of time a week. A real worry, as these people aren't even my freinds, and I fell like chump asking them to not smoke.
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hmm...

A couple of times a week. Is it nicotine you are worried about - or something else. ;)

aussie_geek
 
runninmac said:
I find it really rude when people smoke infront of me (ecspeccaly when they dont ask if its alright). Im very sensitive to smoke and my eyes will get all red and my nose will start to sniffel. I would just ask them to not do it in your room 1. its not good for your health 2. not good for theyre health 3. not good for your eMacs apperance. :p
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4. Its not good at all for your eMac. It will definitely shorten its life span. Smoke is not a good thing for hard drives. The electromagnetic head inside the hard drive rides on air. When smoke particles get inside your hard drive with the electromagnetic head riding on dirty air, well, bad things will happen eventually, such is it hitting the platter while its spinning. Also, the nicotine sticks to things like capacitors and chips, which will attract dust, and dirt. Once that happens, they'll overheat and start pushing out/spewing liquid (the capacitors, not chips). That will serve for a logicboard replacement. The list goes on and on. Smoke is NOT good for a computer at all.

There is a time to be an ****** about things, and this is one of them. I would be extremely anal about things like this. Its not good for your health, nor is it good for anything actually. It makes your clothes smell, your skin smell. Its not good for any other electronic device that you own. Personally, I would make them go outside if they want to smoke.
 
A while ago i bought a beige G3 for parts off of eBay, and not knowing it was from a smoker, bought it.

once it arrived i threw it out, because it stunk of smoke, and was yellow in color. i couldn't stand it to even turn it on, it would blow ciggerette stench out from the case.

anyway, good luck keeping your mac clean.
 
Ick--nothing worse than a tar-stained computer. I'm siding with the pessimists here; my father in law smokes, but only one or two cigarettes a day indoors, and that's still enough to deposit a nasty yellow film on almost anything out of daily cleaning reach in the room in a fairly short period of time.

Computers--particularly well-ventilated bright white Macs--push so much air through themselves that they're far more likely than anything else in your house to collect whatever it is in the air.

Related comment:
Spanky Deluxe said:
Computers don't yellow as much anymore anyway, it was the beige plastic of yesteryear's computers that really suffered at the hands of smokers.
Click to expand...
I'm not so sure about this; my parents have a G4 iMac, and although the computer is only two or three years old now, the white keyboard has gone yellowish... and there aren't any smokers in the house. The iMac is still white, but I haven't figured out what could yellow the keyboard that severely.

Anybody else had this happen to a newer Apple keyboard?
 
the white keyboard has gone yellowish... and there aren't any smokers in the house.
Click to expand...

Hmmm... that is odd, maybe it has something to do with the plastic used in Apple keyboards - it must oxidize or generally slowly react to the air in some way. Unless the dog secretly smokes of course.
 
All clear plastic yellows with time. I think the iMac handles suffered a lot, I saw a lot of yellow handles on non-smokers iMacs, it's the heat buildup or something. But nicotine certainly speeds this up. Some yellow buildup can be removed by using a non-abrasive cleaning product on a damp rag (standard warnings apply about using chemicals on computers). Once the plastic itself has yellowed tho, smokers or not, you can't get it clear again. Then again Cascade makes a product for stained tupperware-- I once soaked my iMac's case in a mixture of it, and it definitely made it somewhat clearer-- but I was bored and most people won't want to dismantle their entire computer. I was thinking they might use the same chemical in the Armor-all dashboard wipes, but I've never tried them. Anyway with light smoke on an irregular basis, it should take plenty of time to be noticed... you'll probably be using a fabulous new Mactel by then :)
 
You can get that yellow off with household amonia (I hope I got the English name right). But first try on a small piece of course to see if it eats up the plastic.
 
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