'Playing the plastic piano'

Keyboards

Cleaning

Keyboards get dusty. The dust won't stop keys working and a vacuum cleaner with a soft brush will extract deep-down dust from between the keys. Occasionally, a small piece of debris can cause a key to stick or stop working. A sharp tap will usually dislodge the problem but might move it to another key. In this case just keep tapping until the grit is off the sensitive area.

Coffee and keyboards do not mix. Those taking it black might get away with the odd slop or spill. There are no dangerous voltages and the actual key switches are sealed in a membrane. Milk and sugar both form glue. For those who peck slowly at the keys, the stickiness should not cause a problem. Touch typists might have problems until the dust coats the glue you have added and a fairly normal service is resumed. You will get away with it once or twice, but learn to keep coffee and keyboards apart.

The right solution: if the patina of grime on the keys gives offence, get a damp cloth. Put one drop (not a squirt) of almost any kitchen-based cleaner on it and then squeeze the cloth so that the cleaning agent is dispersed. Squeezing also makes sure that there will be no drips. After half a dozen, gentle passes the grime will dissolve (an impressive demonstration of the power of cleaning fluids even when very dilute) and you can polish away the damp and debris with a dry cloth (avoid kitchen roll or tissues or you will have another cleaning job on your hands picking the paper fragments from between the keys).

Retirement

Keyboards get tired and wear out, especially if you have a few keen games players who can't afford a separate controller. They will bash a few keys and destroy the keyboard quickly. The letters suffer more when pounded by peckers rather than by touch typists. The clever Mr Remington arranged the most common letters on the keyboard so that they would be hit by the weaker digits. At the time, avoiding clashing keys was more important than user convenience. But the Qwerty keyboard survived and is a monument to this robust approach to industrial design.

Fancy keyboards on the market include various touch pads or rollerballs to replace mice and items such as a volume control. A new keyboard incorporates the latest thinking on ways to avoid sore wrists, arms, back and neck with padding and contours in ergonomic places. Happily they are detachable for those who find them uncomfortable.

So when your keyboard shows sign of age, show it some respect. Think about retiring it to a shelf where it can gather dust and gaze down on your creativity, and buy a new one.

Useful keystrokes

© Charles Jones 2001  

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