News: 1615536913

Are you suggesting that fruity users dribble on their keyboards?

I don't think it's dribble they need to protect against judging by the excitement shown at some announcements

...damn, that's nasty....

There's a lot of users that drivel on their keyboards.

(N.B. I removed the "f" word to try and avert a torrent of downvotes. Prob won't stop the grammar pedants though).

And ye gods they were a pain to install. But rather important when IT started to be useful in say vehicle workshops.

Agreed. At an ex employer's we had to share our work stations with members on other shifts. I had the early morning shift & was always having to wear disposable plastic gloves to clean the keyboard, mouse, & monitor before I could actually *use* the damned things. One of my other-shift-coworkers was a disgusting bastard that ate, drank, & smoked all over everything. Repeated complaints did nothing but amuse/annoy my manager.

I finally bought a keyboard condom & applied it, but I couldn't figure out what to do with the mouse nor monitor. I ended up affixing cling wrap over them in the hopes said coworkers would get the hint. They didn't & had the unmitigated gall to complain that *I* was making it difficult for THEM to do their jobs.

My boss made me remove the keyboard condom & plastic wrap, so I returned the next day with my own brand new keyboard & mouse. The company ones got locked in the drawer while I worked, then returned at the end of my shift when I took my toys home for safe keeping. I still had to wipe down the monitor every morning to clear it of the detrius, but at least I no longer needed to sterilize the keyboard & mouse before starting work.

If any of those ex coworkers are reading this, I hope you contract a scathing case of SpaceHerpes.

Upvote for Ice Pirates reference.

No one at work, besides me, may touch my keyboard or mouse. And I still used to rinse it biweekly.

Got a bit traumatised in a former life when I discovered the disgusting, brownish-grey, sticky patina of filth covering my then boss's desk, keyboard, mouse, stapler, pens and everything. Heck! It even covered the boss himself.

Used to service printers as well as part of my job. Regularly called to an industrial waste site's office/cabin where there was an OKI dot matrix 132 col inside a large printer hood. The fan built into the hood that was supposed to provide airflow across the printer would regularly sieze.

Why.... chain smokers in the office, the grunge/tar from the smoke would glue the fan.

I've got a million of these, how log have you got?

I was, for a brief time, the UK pricing manager of one of IBM's then competitors. AFAIR we priced PC keyboards at £199 a throw. When I pleaded I was embarrassed by the margin and lack of competitiveness I was firmly reprimanded that we needed to give our salesmen (yep - all men) room to negotiate discounts if the customers would buy enough to make Atlas Club!

Now I pay about a fiver for keyboard & mouse from my favourite wholesaler. But then, I don't smoke.

With working at home freeing smokers from workplace restrictions is this becoming an issue again?

...Let me know if you ever see one in use...

Back in the days when I had friends that smoked, if I wanted to show them stuff on my PC I would wait until they'd finish their cig, then propose a demo.

I have never allowed cigarette smoke near my equipment. There's enough to clean with normal dust already.

"...I have never allowed cigarette smoke near my equipment. There's enough to clean with normal dust already..."

I've never, ever, allowed anyone to smoke in my house full stop. Problem solved.

Both my ex-mother and ex-father in law smoke, as does my mum. On the occasions they visited they smoked outside, no exceptions, no matter the weather. And even then the dirty sods had a habit of just flicking their cigarette butts on the floor wherever they stood, no matter how often I made them pick them up again.

I have found over the years that smokers are overwhelmingly selfish - my own mother, despite being one of only two people who smoke in my family would insist on sitting in the smoking section of restaurants (remember when that was a thing?). She eventually got the message when I refused and sat in the non smoking one each time.

Almost every smoker I've ever encountered has said things like (in reference to the smoking ban before it came in) "It's my right to smoke in a pub... if non smokers don't like it they can go somewhere else..."

Which of course, utterly ignored the fact that overwhelmingly more people do not smoke compared to those that do.

Anyway it's Friday and it's too early to continue on my soapbox ;-)

My reply to pub smokers using that argument was "I have the right to drink beer - would you be ok if I pissed on your shoes?"

Re: Smoking/non-smoking sections.

I remember when the food court at Euston station introduced a non-smoking section, it was on the mezzanine. So not only did you have to walk through all of the smokers to reach it, but all of the smoke then drifted up towards you...

I remember an airline in the 1980's (I forget which one) that put the smoking section at the front of the aircraft. It created similar problems.

No smoking in my workspace, most of the keyboards died after being drowned in Coca-cola, one or two had issues with ketchup.

I worked for a time on QA of IBM's "Industrial" PC, intended for use in places like factory floors rather than offices. One test put the system in an excessively smoky and dirty environment - after a while the keys on the keyboard could not even be depressed as there was so much gunk caught underneath the keycaps. But we were able to simply turn it over, shake and tap it, and everything started working fine again.

Is there such a thing as a laptop condom to protect laptops against thrills and spills from users' coffee cups and water glasses?

My neighbour once asked me to have a look at her laptop as it kept shutting down. Just touching the thing revealed that it was extremely hot, and also covered in a sticky residue which reeked of tobacco.

Turning it over, the mesh covering the ventilation intakes was no longer a mesh - the tar had built up so much that about 90% of the holes were closed up completely! Ten minutes with a stiff paintbrush, a vacuuum cleaner and some baby wipes returned it to working (and clean) condition.

I 'liberated' my old SGI keyboard over 20 years ago from a former employer as the SGI Indys we used were being replaced with Sun equipment.

At my next place of employment where I was writing a lot of code, that keyboard was used and it sounded like a machine gun going off. Worked very well as a 'do not disturb' device.

It is still going strong.

Is it just me? Modern flat keyboards (like the Dell one I'm currently abusing) behave like floaty slidey things. I want something traditional, made of depleted uranium billets with enough mass to give a black hole indigestion, nice chunky keys and a decent curve to the keyboard. Is there an XT/AT to USB converter?

There is indeed. A chap called Soarer makes a contraption that does the job nicely. The only problem I've had is plugging it into my KVM, but my KVM seems to have an interesting view of USB standards so I don't think it's the fault of Soarer's converter.

Most modern keyboards are dire: I'm really not a fan of the squishy rubber dome things which often seem to evoke the feel of the Spectrum only with actual keys perched on top. There are various modern mechanical keyboards of varying quality (currently using a Durgod with MX Reds in it; feels a bit like a BBC Micro or Dragon from years past) and you can still get Model M keyboards from Unicomp but a lot of people think the vintage Model M and especially Model F keyboards are superior.

The music was great. But Jesus... there was a lot of fag smoke, fag ends, and ashtrays everywhere. It was awful. One the best laws ever passed (I think it was by Labour - might have been as a result of laws passed in the EU) was banning smoking in public places. What a difference. It's amazing how one becomes accustomed to norms so quickly. Watch an old episode of The Sweeny or anything around that time and it seems outrageous to see people smoking in offices!

I remember when I left school in 1987 I was sent to work on a YTS helping to run a really old ICL computer system for an agricultural dealer (Shukers, in Shrewsbury - in case anyone remembers it!). One of the ladies in the office was such a prodigious chain smoker that she was given her own office. And this in an office full of smokers. She was one of my favourites, but god.. the stench and fog when you went in there, and the yellow walls and ceilings... Shudder...!

I worked for Mars for a while in the mid-90s and was called down to the chocolate consistency testing room to look at their erratic PC.

It was a venerable IBM XT with 5 1/4 floppies and the flackery keyboard.

They complained that the floppies only worked once or twice and had to keep making new ones.

I typed on the keyboard and instead of the clack it was a sickly sort of crunch. It turned out to be full of bits of chocolate accumulated over years of testing.

When I opened the XT’s case it was jam-packed full of dust and hair and chocolate, so much that it pushed against the slot of the inserted floppy and contaminated it.

I cleaned it all out and suggested a keyboard condom.

The chocolate consistency testing machine was quite fascinating to watch though.

I remember reading an article many years ago in one of the many IT publications that somebody used to put grotty keyboards through a dishwasher to divest them of various layers of gunk and detritus, the author said that provided they were given sufficient time to dry out completely before hooking up to the computer they were perfectly usable

I've taken the keys off and put them in the dishwasher before (finally a use for the lid of that basket thing!) but the idea of putting the electronic bits in there makes me feel rather nervous. Maybe I shouldn't be, but I don't think I'll put that one to the test.

the PC prophylactic

We use these in the NHS in various environments where fluids might be flying around.

you would not believe how much they cost.

A security gate with PS/2 PC.

The queue of cars entering the gate caused a build-up of gunge that made the key caps illegible.

I sourced a keyboard condom and a new keyboard.