Taking Care of a Developer's Most Important Tool...

Today I finally took the time to completely clean my keyboard (a Cherry G80–3000). I removed all keys, cleaned the area behind the keys with a vacuum cleaner (uh.. disgusting) and used soap and warm water to wash the keys (oh look how bright they are now!). It’s not that I didn’t take care of my keyboard at all before, but after some years of use, superficial cleaning with a damp cloth just isn’t enough.

Some pictures:

20060129_KeyboardWashing    20060129_KeyboardDrying

20060129_KeyboardBeforeSorting    20060129_KeyboardComplete

Ahhh… Almost like having a brand new keyboard!

 

6 Comments

  • That keyboard is mint!

  • Over the years I've tried many different ways of keyboard cleaning. the method you use is what I found to be the most successful. Among the least successful were the Dishwasher technique and the Soak-It-In-The-Bathtub method.



    The easiest way to go about it for me is the Buy-A-New-One-Cause-They're-Cheap method. Looking at your "plain Jane" keyboard -- I'm surprised you didn't take that route too :-)

  • Don't be fooled by the plain looks - the Cherry G80-3000 is a high-quality keyboard (unlike e.g. the G81 or G83 models), and with a price of about 50$ (German EUR price converted to $) it's not what I would call "cheap" ;-)

  • How old is that keyboard?

    Surely these days if you were going to pay 50$ US for a keyboard you could get wireless, multimedia, self-cleaning keyboard ...

  • It's a keyboard that has been around for years and still is available (and surely will be for many years). Sure, other keyboards are wireless, have many features and gadgets, but when I'm developing software, I need a no-nonsense, high-quality keyboard. If you compare a G80-3000 with any e.g. Microsoft keyboard side-by-side, you'll immediately feel the difference.



    I've had people typing on my keyboard and after a few keystrokes spontaneously saying "hmm... that's is a really good keyboard!". My girlfriend, who's using computers at work, but usually does not care about hardware details, would actually kill anybody trying to replace the G80-3000 in her office with a different model.

  • I do this about once a year. I always use an IBM (Lexmark) keyboard @ home and work - the kind that was introduced with the PS/2 machines. It has easily removable keycaps - kind of a slip cover over the actual keys. Easy to remove and replace. I even have a complete set of extras from a broken keyboard should I ever need them.



    Anyway the removeable keycaps make it easy to clean. When they don't look white anymore, its probably time for a cleaning!

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