Powerbook PRAISE!

[motulist]

This afternoon I accidentally knocked over my water bottle and it spilled a ton of water all over my powerbook, the keyboard surface, the screen, everything. I immediately held down the power button and forced a hard shutdown. I wiped it up as best I could with a paper towel. I shook it upside down a bit and let it stay off for an hour and a half to let the water evaporate. Then I hit the power button... BONG! It started up! I started up from the install cd, ran disk utility and only found normal errors. I started up from the hard disk and... it's alive! ALIVE! PRAISE JOBS! IT'S ALIVE!!!!

=)

 

[tech4all]

Your lucky that wasn't soda or coffee, may not have turned out so well.

 

[mkrishnan]

Consider an iSkin if you see this happening again. Or possibly wrapping your whole PB in a zip-lock bag.

But I'm glad it's safe! I can't imagine the trauma I'd have if my beloved iBook had that!

But I'll just add my story of miraculous luck. I had a birthday party a couple weeks ago, and came home a little topped off still and too wound-up to sleep immediately. I lay out on the sofa with my iBook, and was surfing for a couple minutes. I guess I crashed. I woke up, and found my iBook on the ground, iSkin dangling next to it. It landed directly on the power plug! Fortunately, the power plug on the brick took the brunt of the damage. Nothing happened to the LCD or anything, and the plug in the computer is fine (my second power brick still goes in fine). But the external metal collar of the plug was pretty badly bent. I played with a pair of pliers and I've gotten it back so that it goes in, although it doesn't fit perfectly.

Amen for lucky escapes from stupid-human-tricks that should've destroyed our Apples!

 

[finalcoolman]

An hour and a half? Thats not long enough, should be for a day and a half at least, with battery removed

 

[katie ta achoo]

Wow.. lucky!

Powerbooks are resilient little things!

 

[JeffTL]

I avoid stuff like this by using, at least at home, an iCurve to elevate my iBook.

 

[Demon Hunter]

A little water doesn't hurt em I gues. Anything with sugar though, and well, buh-bye PowerBook.

 

[cb911]

yeah you're fortunate that no water got onto the components... 1.5 hrs isn't really enough. i'd just have left the battery out and waited a day and hoped for the best. but glad to hear that it's all okay. must have given you a heart attack nearly.

and if you do happen to spill anything like soft drink or coffee... isn't the best thing to do just to shut it down (or pull the battery out) and then (with the battery out) wash it with distilled water? distilled water won't corrode the components... but i guess you're better off using normal water if that's all you've got. can't be worse than the coffee or soft drink.

 

[aricher]

Yes, a distilled water rinse is what everyone says to do in this case - goes against all logic but it works. A friend of mine spilled Pepsi on his Pismo and was able to salvage it this way. Really should let it dry for a day though - battery out of course.

 

[PrincipeAzzuro]

Praise Pismo surviving Aqua Alta

In my experience the only solution to get rid of the condensation WITHOUT RESIDUAL TRACES ON THE SCREEN is to open the PB (=open the screen) while switched off (battery detached) and to lay it backwards on a heater. 2 important things to remember:
1. do not lay any plastic or otherwise deformable parts of the PB directly on the metal surface of the heater - put something between like a thin cloth
2. do not turn on the heat too much. On a scale between 0 (off) and 10 (max) I suggest 7 or 8.

You might want to know how come I am so sure about all this: well it happened to me at least half a dozen times. I am used to taking my PB (a Pismo upgraded to G4 by Daytech) in all parts of the world while shooting (films) so accidents and incidents are pretty much routine. The PB is now 6 years old, still with it's first upper casing, I changed the lower casing (the one around the trackpad) about a year ago because the thin plastic joint below the mouse button broke and because of too many scratches on the surface.

Liquid in the machine: it happened to me with Water, sparkling and not sparkling, coffee (that was a hard one, had to detach the entire machine, "wash it" with window cleaner spray and only then "dry" it), CocaCola (same routine as with the coffee though it was trickier because I drink my coffee without sugar, whereas Coke is practically liquid sugar with color) and Milk. I guess the most dangerous of all was the Coke incident (my assistant tosses a can of coke and it spilled all over his Dell and my Mac, BTW the Dell died whereas my Mac is still alive as I am writing on it right now), I had read a lot about it's corrosive abilities and was worried about not beeing in time before it destroyed other things.

To finish: I think Apple never ever built a PB as good a the Pismo again; some rumours say the next PB generation is supposed to be pretty similar to it. It better is: the best decision I made a year ago was to upgrade it to a G4. It was worth everyone of the 350$: today I am running Tiger and the machine is even faster as it was with Panther 10.3.9.

 

[john_satc]

anyone have suggestions about what to do if you spill water / drink with sugar (tea / coke) on an ibook please incase of future accidents! Cheers

 

[YS2003]

As we all agree, he was lucky wiht that water-spilage accident. For my machines, I will keep water/drink/food away from my machines. I keep PBs off the table on iCurve or notebook cooler, just in case of occasional presence of a cup of coffee or a bottle of beer.

 

[zach]

anyone have suggestions about what to do if you spill water / drink with sugar (tea / coke) on an ibook please incase of future accidents! Cheers

That's a VERY dangerous thing to do: the sugars in the liquid can really mess things up.

My friend killed his BRAND NEW TiBook that way.

If it happened to me, here's what I'd do.

1. Take the entire laptop apart into smallest possible component pieces.
2. Set aside screen/harddrive/optical drive.
3. Clean boards with alcohol/distilled water (be very careful about this...)
4. Clean screen/harddrive/optical drive as best as possible without using any more liquid.
5. Leave out to dry for a little while.
6. Reassemble.
7. Pray.

 

[GFLPraxis]

Yes, a distilled water rinse is what everyone says to do in this case - goes against all logic but it works. A friend of mine spilled Pepsi on his Pismo and was able to salvage it this way. Really should let it dry for a day though - battery out of course.

Distilled water doesn't conduct electricity...that is somewhat logical.

 

[Peterkro]

Despite popular belief water is not a electrical conductor,its the impurities in most water that cause conduction.Ergo distilled water is a insulator.

 

[nw43]

anyone have suggestions about what to do if you spill water / drink with sugar (tea / coke) on an ibook please incase of future accidents! Cheers

Yeah, don't put sugar in your tea!

sorry....

 

[john_satc]

Yeah, don't put sugar in your tea!

sorry....

Thank fully I don't drink tea or coffee or coke or even sugar drinks - anything with caffeine.
However I am really paronoid something would happen, though I have my iBook on an iCurve. Infact I have a strict no drinks on table rule as i don't want my ipod/ibook/keyboard +mouse/ext. hard drive/mobile/cordless phone and all my work ruined!
I am a weird 16 year old :S