Late Christmas Eve I was celebrating in my preferred manner, namely at home with a large glass of rum and my girl friend.
Both of our laptops were on the table, with my one playing some documentary from the 4oD website... Then disaster happened. I knocked over my glass of rum... It flew majestically through the air and landed upside down upon the glowing keyboard of my 15" MacBook Pro. With a fizz and a pop, the machine went dead.
I paused for a second, with my instincts urging me to push the power button and make it work again, the tears welling up inside me, for this is not a new machine but with 8Gig RAM and a 2.8Hgz dual core processor I was hoping for at least 2 more years out of it... but somewhere deep in my brain, a voice kept me from hitting the power button. I yanked the power cord out, flipped the machine over and pulled the battery. OK, I thought, all power sources removed this is my last best hope.
I grabbed my tool kit and removed the back of the machine. Looking inside I found a fair bit of rum soaking the chips, so with the corner of some tissue paper I carefully soaked up all liquids I could see... Then I went to bed.
The next day my girl friend and I went down to see her mother, so I left the machine to "dry out" for the next 3 days. When we got home I check the board and it was clear of any liquid, so I attached the power cable to see if the indicator light would illuminate... it did not. Resigning myself to the inevitability of a new laptop purchase, I reassembled the laptop.
With the battery now in place I opted for one last try of the power button. Nothing.
Then my girlfriend, reached over and held the button down... the machine lurched into life... and appears to be working fine... also the sticky keys on the keyboard are now much less sticky! Win-Win!
So if you spill on your electronics, get the power off ASAP, and don't turn it on until you are sure it's dry.
