Coffee + Laptop = F#&%!

I spilled coffee on my laptop.

I was reading the latest headlines in J Exp Biol, when I carelessly reached for my coffee and it tipped over, spilling caffeinated bliss all over my laptop (Toshiba M50). It was one of those fancy Starbucks no-spill travel mugs, but somehow the inertia of the fall carried the coffee out of the sipping hole in a jet of destructive brownness.

I quickly shut-down by holding the power button for a couple seconds, and then flipped it over to drain the coffee and unplug the battery and power cable. Then I stood there, motionless for a good minute or two, contemplating my next mode of action as the coffee dripped from the keyboard and onto the infrequently swept floor.

I really hoped this was covered by the warranty, as ridiculous as that sounds. My brother, a devout mac enthusiast, was going to love this. I could already hear comments like "If you bought a mac, it would clean itself," or "the circuitry in macs actually repels liquids and prevents them from shorting out."

After letting the keyboard drain, and going over hopeless scenarios in my head, I carefully removed the hard drive while the laptop was still upside down. It was still dry; hoorah. At least I can save my data, which hadn't been backed-up since last week. Then I flipped the laptop back over, and slowly removed the keyboard. There was surprisingly little liquid underneath the keyboard. Only a few drops, and they were confined to a wonderfully designed plastic barrier, which was likely engineered with this sole purpose in mind.

I let it sit in front of a fan for the weekend to dry out. Visions of the dreaded BSOD, clouded my thoughts all weekend. When I finally powered it up on Monday, I was greeted by a friendly and familiar Windows startup screen, followed quickly by my desktop.

And everyone lived happily ever after. I even have a coffee scented keyboard now. But the letter "m" refuses to work. So I may end up running the keyboard through the dishwasher as a last resort.

UPDATE: I fixed the letter "m" by prying it off and cleaning with a damp q-tip. Bonus.