Laptops and Liquids Don't Mix

Has this ever happened to you?

I know better than to keep anything liquid near my desk. However, late one night this week, while working on my Inspiron 9300 laptop, my wrist gently bumped the cup of tea I had set down nearby, spilling it over the entire right half of the PC.

Aside from instantly cursing a blue streak, I tipped my laptop onto its side to let as much liquid as possible drain from it. There was a lot. (Editor's Note: Here is Amber sans laptop. Amber is PCW's On Your Side columnist.)

I unplugged the laptop and removed the battery while listening to tiny explosion noises come from inside the machine. It sounded like someone was playing the game Doom inside my laptop. This was not good.

While the laptop lay on its side, draining, I did the best I could to dry off any visible liquid with paper towels. I dabbed carefully at the keyboard and in the nooks of the casing. Then I broke out the big guns: a hairdryer.

I kept the dryer on a cool setting and aimed it along my keyboard, into the fans and any other opening I could get to without dissembling the laptop. If it had been working, I could have looked at our video that tells you what to do if an electronic gadget gets wet.

I made what was probably a slightly frantic call to Associate Editor Greg Adler (who is the PCW editor in the video mentioned above), asking what else I could do. He sighed and told me to bring it into the PC World Test Center in the morning. I wandered around the rest of the night, not really sure what to do with myself.

I didn't know I was so laptop-dependent. Everything I had planned on doing that night from watching the new episode of Heroes to printing a chore list for my roommates pretty much required me to have access to my system. It was a little disorientating.

The next day I watched as Greg carefully took apart the most expensive piece of machinery that I own. By the time he was done, it lay in about fifteen pieces. I only regret that I didn't take a picture of it while it was disassembled. Fortunately there wasn?t much water inside, although the modem seemed a bit damp, as did the video card.

We let it dry out for most of the day, using the hair dryer intermittently. We then put it back together and crossed our fingers while pressing the power button.

It booted.

We cheered.

Then it died again.

Although we managed to make it all the way to my desktop, and started transferring files to a Buffalo external hard drive, the laptop continued to shut itself down. While neither of us were sure if it was simply an issue of the fans not working properly to cool down the machine or something much more serious we decided to call it a day.

I spent that night drinking a beer and reading a book, because there was little else I could do. All my files were trapped on my laptop. If I couldn?t get any data off of it I stood to lose a handful of Word documents, a handful of pictures and about three thousand songs from my iTunes library. Not fatal, but not great.

Plus, I was in no position to purchase a new notebook, contemplate being forced to buy Vista, or figure out how much time it would take me to transfer over my McAfee security suite.

I?m not sure if it was luck (I like to think it was my fast-acting sensibilities and good karma, but it was more likely Greg?s hard work) but when we started the computer the next day, it was fine. It booted. It stayed running. And I?m backing up everything on it right now just in case it doesn?t decide to stay fine.

My roommates, learning instantly from my clumsy error, have both begun to back up everything on their machines as well. And me? Well, I?ll just take my tea in the kitchen from now on.