I hear you. I used to have wallpaper that said "This is not a touchscreen". And I remember having a TA in a programming class who not just pointed at the screen, but actually touched it, leaving a big greasy smudge each time. Ick.

The statistics regarding keyboard disgusting-ness are staggering.

If those Microsoft 4000 keyboards were not such a pain in the neck, i would definately toss it in the wash.

also, glad to hear that im not the only screen touching murder around.

Haha so true so true. I'm generally a polite guy, but OMG that changes when I see somebody using their finger. I always end up explaining to them if they REALLY need to touch, then flip the hand such that the only contact is the tip of the nail. I can tolerate this, even if I still don't particularly like it.

Even worse that the people who just smudge up my display are those that press so hard on the screen they make it clear that the "L" in LCD does indeed meed liquid. But I do keep a pack of monitor wipes text to my desk, and in my laptop bag, at all times.

Next time someone touches your display, just poke them in the eye and say, "now you know how my computer feels!"

Is that a picture of you, Jeff ? ? ?

It's creepy how much you look like a little toddler :-)

dishwasher. wow.

That reminds me I need to clean my LCD monitor at work! Thanks.

Interestingly, when I was a designer I was completely anal about my monitor and did actually have a sign on it telling people (including the cleaning ladies who would often smear a dirty rag over it during the evening for some reason) not to touch on pain of pain. Now that I'm just a lowly (but better paid) business analyst I don't care nearly as much and have been known to even touch my monitor myself... I suppose it could have something to do with the fact that I used to have to pay almost $1000 for my monitors and now the company just supplies me with cheap ones.

Anyway, I've actually found that the microfiber cloths work just as well with water as they do with the special cleaning juice. Just put some water on the cloth to wipe, then turn it over and dry with the other side. Cleans it up a treat.

I want that bottle of Dust Off with the chrome handle!

More disgusting than toilet seats AND keyboards put together: grocery cart seats. Babies with dirty diapers sit there. Little yappy dogs sit there. Then they sit in the rain and then the hot sun. And I used to put my FOOD there!!! Never again!! (URP!!!)

oh yeah, ive been cleaning my keyboard in the dishwasher for years now. I swear by it, its so quick and easy.

Your hand is dirtier than your keyboard no matter what. What people should not do is touch your eyes/nose/mouth without washing your hands, no matter how clean your keyboard is.

If you use the dish-washer, be sure to take the metal pieces out of your spacebar/shift/ctrl/alt keys -- otherwise they melt the plastic.

I have 2 17" plastic knitting needles in a vase beside my monitors at work. When someone comes by I make sure they use one of the needles to point at/touch the screen. Whenever I go to pair program with someone I make sure to take a needle with me so I can pay the same respect to their screens as I expect on mine. It works pretty well as I can sit back and point at their screen instead of having to lean really close to point at it all the time.

For the times when I have to clean my screen I've found that Klear Screen's products work pretty good. I recommend just picking up one of their kits: http://www.klearscreen.com/searchresult.aspx?CategoryID=4

Its worse when they use a pen or pencil. its not disgusting just impossible to clean.

I hate it when people touch my monitor. The first time someone does it I politely tell them to stop, but a lot of people seem not to care, and do it again. That's when I physically block their hand from touching my screen... and secretly hate them forever...

Anyway, like a previous poster said, I swear by microfiber cloths and water too. In my experience most of the screen cleaning products leave a lot more residue than plain water.

About dishwashing your keyboard, I did that once, and the keyboard (a Microsoft Comfort Curve 2000) had some problems afterward, including typing "hg" whenever the "h" key was pressed. Luckily the keyboard only cost $20.

That picture is classic, I'm saving this post for the next time somebody tries to lay their sausagelike fat greasy fingers on my precious.

I got a bottle of that monster clean stuff when I bought my Plasma TV and decided to try it on my computer monitor... simply put, that stuff is amazing. Also have the bundled cloth and I highly recommend it.

If that is your dishwasher and your 70's kitchen flooring...

It's time for an upgrade!!

I've found using the pads designed for acne prevention to be quite successful at removing gunk off the tops of keyboard keys and telephone keypads.

Actually, there's really no reason to put your keyboard in the dishwasher. Use the same technique with hot, soapy water and wash just like you would your dishes. It's a lot safer than using the dishwasher -- the temperature is a lot lower, so you don't run the risk of melting anything, and the detergent is a LOT safer -- no phosphoric acid (which can be a result of that dishwasher detergent) on my equipment, please!

As far as the display goes, I've mellowed out considerably since switching to an LCD based display. In the bad old days of CRTs, every bloody fingerprint would smudge on my display and show up whenever the screen went black. Now (with a non-reflectively coated LCD), not so much...

Really - could there possibly be this many people a row posting that absolutely HATE other people touching "their" monitors? Seems like an odd quirk.

Go ahead and lick mine for all I care.

I don't own it.

Plus, I can use cleaning supplies that I don't purchase to wipe it off every once in a while - GASP.

Public touch screen kiosks at airports and banks must totally piss you off...

Nathan... not everyone has a million dollars so they can replace there high quality keyboard every few weeks.

Keyboards are the most disgusting things in the world unless its used by someone with half a brain. I also hate people touching my monitor because you can always see the nasty smudge on the screen from their greasy sausage fingers.

And type of public computers or classroom computers make me want to slit my throat

Man, you can be considered a geek if you care more about people touching your 22'' LCD monitor than touching your woman.

The only thing worse than the "touchers" are the "stabbers". There's one lady at work who jams her finger into the screen so hard that I expect the back of the display to crack in response. I've taken to shifting my chair when she stops by so that she can't actually get to my screens.

A guy I used to work with had his screen so smudged up at one point that he literally could not read part of it. He even commented to me that he always had to scroll documents away from "the blurry area" to read the text. When I reached over with a tissue* and wiped the gunk away, he got the most baffled look on his face that I've seen and said "huh, I never thought of that." (* I know, not the ideal screen cleaning product, but at that point it could hardly have made things worse.)

I would personally advise against using the foofoo cans to blow the bacterial gunk out of your keyboard. Like leaf blowers and bird droppings, an aerosol spray can make, well, an aerosol out of the stuff in the keyboard, at which point you will promptly inhale it.

Two weeks ago a guy at work sprayed a filthy old keyboard while I was standing next to him. We we're both out sick for the next two days.

Jeff, head over to your local Ford dealership and purchase a bottle of Ford Triple Clean. (around $12 if I recall correctly.) It is by far the best keyboard cleaner I've found in twenty years.

@Jake..

If you are putting your keyboard in the dishwasher every few weeks you have issues. You obviously need to start wearing some surgical gloves before you use your keyboard from now on.

If you set your priorities right you should be able to avoid a new keyboard when one is required. You are a programmer, so spending your money on your programming needs should be a high priority.

I agree with Aaron - really annoying is when people want to point something on the screen, USING THEIR PEN as a pointing device. I have various coworkers with pen streaks all over their screens since they have the habit of doing that - never understood why.

avoid = afford

Touching can be forgiven, its a learned behaviour from using the only other collaborative displays that most of us have used - whiteboards and blackboards. Even the most ardent anti-touch screen freaks can't resist tapping blackboards and whiteboards to emphasize a point when "pairing" at a blackboard when the discussion gets heated..

At least I know I'm not the only person obsessed with screen cleanliness. The only problem I have is that my laptop is a convertible tablet. I carry a microfiber cloth with it all the time, so I can clean 10-15 time a day. :)

I've heard the dishwasher tick works, even complete.

Well, I haven't had the luxury of owning a monitor I can warn people away from yet... I'm on a tablet so screen-touching is inevitable :D but a screen protector helps, so that's not too big a problem.

I've cleaned both types of keyboards (PC and laptop), and both by complete disassembly. It's not as troublesome as it seems; take a photo of your keyboard layout, proceed to pick off all the keys (which has a really gentle learning curve), throw them all (keyboard tray included, but not for the laptop!!!) in a tub of water (or soap water if you like), scrub away. Then lay them out somewhere to dry before reassembling.

It's much more thorough than a dishwasher (yes, I am anal about it) and much more satisfying. But of course, I never let that much dirt accumulate in the first place so I can't say much for the ecosystem-keyboards.

@Nathan: Buying a new keyboard every so often is kinda wasteful, don't you think? If you can clean the house, your clothes, your cutlery and a whole host of other stuff you use frequently, why not your keyboard as well?

I wish I could afford to buy new dishes and clothes all the time so I never need to wash them again.

Years ago one of my coworkers kept seeing ants and other bugs around his desk. We eventually saw one crawling out behind a keyboard letter. I took the cover off and the inside was swarming with little bugs-- really one of the more shocking things I've seen. I assume they were eating crumbs and other things that had fallen on the keyboard.

To be fair to my coworker-- he'd just inherited the old machine from someone who'd left the company.

I did rinse the cover and sponge the inside out before I reassembled it. However, one of the shift keys stopped working and we eventually threw it out.

"...compressed air dusters aren't just for sneaking up behind your unsuspecting coworkers and friends and spraying them in the neck and ears."

Being as your post is about boundaries, this passage sticks out like a sore thumb.

I am a fan of touching screens. I have taken it a few steps further: White board markers work just as well on screens as they do white boards. This combination is my favorite rapid prototyping tool. Nothing is more empowering than letting your customer write on their software.

"Buying a new keyboard every so often is kinda wasteful, don't you think?"

@kureshii: I guess it depends on which is more important to you. Your time or your money. You're going to waste one or the other either way. Since time = money, the amount of time you will waste away taking your keyboard apart and cleaning it, should be less than the amount of time it should take you to buy a new keyboard. In the article above, Jeff talks about waiting several days! for it to dry out.. and plus he already bought a new one to use as a replacement.

If you're going to go to all that trouble, I say to hell with it and just buy a new one and throw the old one away.

I mean how often are you people taking apart your keyboard and putting it in the dish washer, and then letting it dry for several days and then putting it all together.

Are you people doing this every week?!! I would only consider it a once or twice a year deal. If you are attempting to do all that more than once or twice a year, then you obviously got a redicous amount of time to waste.

I have a some logitech wireless keyboard, which obviously has a lot of technical stuff inside, and it was REALLY gross a month or two ago. I just took it apart, without removing the electrical parts, sprayed it down with some diluted Simple Green, let it sit for a while, and then rinsed it off. The keys themselves I actually immersed to get out the hair and whatnot. Anyway, it worked great. I let it sit overnight before putting the batteries back in and all was well.

Now what do we do with laptops?

What's wrong with you people? Screens are for touching!

My husband sent me this post as we've come to blows over me touching his monitor and he just looks at me in disgust when I show him something on my monitor and point it out with my fingers all over it.

The quickest way to point something out on the screen is to show you. Not by going, "look it's that green pixel in the top right hand corner under the black menu item that says blah blah blah"...in the time it's taken to explain I could have made you a nice cup of tea!

Just say no to liquid screen cleaners. They only come in two varieties:
1. Chemicals that are too harsh for LCD panels
2. Liquids that leave an oily film

I have found one and only one thing that consistently works well (other than posting signs and grabbing people's arms as they head towards the screen): a high quality lens wipe of the ilk used for cleaning photography lenses.

Okay, I love you now... lol. I have told my co-workers about 10,000 times not to touch my freaking screen, lol. They think I am overly anal, but I do not want to see the residue of your visit for the next 2 months.

+ 1 to never touching the screen. It is for viewing, not touching... should shock the crap out of you if you get within 2 inches of it, lol.

Have you ever tried a M$ Ergo keyboard in the dishwasher? I would not mind trying ti but I don't want to waste 60 bucks...

Dell keyboards - unscrew, scrub with dish soap, air-dry overnight, screw back together: good as new

"take a photo of your keyboard layout"

What for? I *know* where all those letters are.

(Oh well, there are still two keys exchanged from my last cleaning session. Never bothered to correct that.)

And hey, to all those little buggers afraid of bacteria: Those on *my* keyboard are *my* germs. I've had them already. So cleaning the darn keyboard from all the pizza crust once a year is surely enough. :P If you're afraid of germs, stop breathing air, especially those from air-conditioners. Maybe, you give some scuba-gear a try? ;)

I've been washing my keyboards in dishwashers for a few years now, and it is definitely the most effective method of cleaning them. I've known schools and colleges that use the dishwasher method as well.

One thing that does worry me is cleaning a laptop keyboard. I'm still looking for a good method of cleaning a laptop out, so maybe I'll give the enclosed guide a try.

Jeff, I know how you feel.

At one job I started, I inherited a filthy keyboard and desk that I did not want to touch. I had to bring in my own cleaning supplies and I never did get comfortable using the thing. I left after a brief few months -- for other reasons of course, but it was nice walking away from that work station for the last time.

@Mike, try a soft, clean paint brush to remove dust from your notebook keyboard and spray some Windex on a paper towel and wipe it down.

> The quickest way to point something out on the screen is to show you.

Yes, and you can do that perfectly well WITHOUT jabbing your fingertip or nail at the screen. Point, not touch - and you don't watch with your fingers but with your eyes. At least, that's what they used to teach little kids.

I find that, at least on this basic Dell keyboard I use at work, when you take it apart you've got 3 bits - the "key" tray where all the keys are plugged into holes, a rubber key mat, and the bottom half. The key tray bit, at least on this keyboard, actually has drain holes that come go all the way through the bottom half too. The key tray bit is also where all the crud collects.

You basically just need to just take the key tray which is all plastic (and a few metal bits under the space/shift/etc) and rinse it in hot water and/or detergent. Shake it dry, alternatively leave it overnight, screw it all back together and magic. You're not getting anything but mechanical parts wet, and they're physically separated from the electronics when it's all back together in case any bits of moisture remain.

Back in the early 1990s at university, we had a particularly expensive Solaris box with an even more expensive flat-screen display. The sign taped to the wall above the display said: "Remember to immediately wash your hands after touching the screen".

Problem solved. No-one dared touch the screen.

As for cleaning keyboards I usually used the very manual and work-intense solution of disassembling the keyboard completely and clean every part individually (yes, the keys are a PITA) in a solution with washing powder and afterwards with clean water. It never occurred to me to stick it into the dishwasher (well, I don't have one anymore so I can't try) and given that my Das Keyboard died from a bit rain (I repaired it in a five-hour session with conductive lacquer) I certainly won't ever try putting the keyboard as whole in it. Those printed circuits rust too easily.

i listened to that segment on NPR and couldn't wait to throw my keyboard into the dish washer. I had heard you could do it before, but after hearing it on NPR I decided to wait no longer.

i really liked that keyboard. :(

I tried the dishwasher trick once, and regretted it because it washed away the lubrication often used on the larger keys. The space bar in particular was much stiffer afterward. I guess I could have relubed it, but I ended up just replacing the keyboard and swearing off the dishwasher method.

Since then, I've reverted to my old method. When they get visibly grotty on the upper surfaces, it's a sure sign it's absolutely disgusting inside. I remove the mechanism from the outer case, pry off all the small keys -- nothing with a metal bail underneath, they're a b**** to reassemble -- shake out the loose stuff over a trash can, use tweezers and Q-tips to pull out the hair and stickier particles, then clean away surface dirt with isopropyl alcohol. It takes maybe half an hour, and the keyboard always works at least as well as it did before.

i love touching screens :)

Me, I'm just disassembling keys from my Microsoft Natural Elite keyboard, wash them either by hand or in a dishwasher and then washing the rest with wet cloth. MS keyboards (at least Natural line) have a damn good plastic cover beneath keys and all the dirt stays just there.

I've even had once a small spider (dead) in my keyboard. Now I wash it every month and vacuum it every 2 days.

And it is always fun watching my friends/family big eyes when I put all the keys back without cheatsheet/screen testing :)

I regulary use a dash of vodka to clean the screen and keyboard on my MacBook - works nicely and its much cheaper than specialist cleaning products like ScreenClean.

No matter how much I avoid it, eventually the display gets touched or sneezed on and I gotta wash it, with the same micro fibers cloth - half dry and half damp with WATER -> NO DETERGENTS OF ANY KIND **EVER** The wrong cleaning agent can cause significant damage to LCD and plamas screens and water is almost free and works just fine if you have good clean micro fiber cloth.

As for keyboards - you can't toss them whole into the dishwasher. Most have thin sheets of plastic covered in conductive ink pressed together with only another insulating sheet of plastic between them. Dry out can take weeks (if ever) and in the mean time, significant corrosion can take place. Avoid that.

Unplug the keyboard, wipe it down on a regular basis, turn it over, knock out the hair, dead skin etc that builds up within (vacume cleaner if you got one) - but eventually, you will need to disassemble and hand wash the keys. About every 9 to 12 months is my cycle for that part.

And for gods sake people, CLEAN YOUR MICE!!! Even worse than those little mobile hovers that people push around their desks called ball mice are the track balls - nothing worse than having to fix something on someone's machine and the track ball is seized solid with gunk. What the heck is wrong with you people? CLEAN THEM OUT!!! I don't wanna touch your built up mouse gunk.

I don't even want to figure out why some people get simple grey dead skin and others end up with slimmy yellow build up instead. And as for the guy who had sticky greenish gung in his mouse - see a doctor, that just ain't right...

Even if you get the screen so dirty the image colors get bleached out through the film of oil and dirty, screen touching has nothing on poor mouse hygene...

Makes me want to carry a vat of acid around with me. (great, now I am gonna have nightmares about some of the machines I have had to work with)

And ya, the MS natural keyboards are !!great!! to type on, but there appears to be some sort of inverse relationship going on between typing experience and clean-ability.

The MS 4000s are almost impossible to disassemble and reassemble.

Following the trend, the next MS natural keyboard will need a chainsaw and dynamite to open and a phd in advanced physics to reassemble.

yeah, I hate touching displays, but even worse is people touching the glass windows in their cars. I used to get a lift to university with a girl who had a permanently misted windscreen. I felt like screaming "use the fans! stop wiping the screen, it makes it worse!" but I never said anything.

I usually don't tell people not to touch the windows in my cars though, because if I did they surely would.

Here's a cleaning horror story, if you are squeamish, avert your eyes: http://episteme.arstechnica.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/34709834/m/834001402931?r=834001402931#834001402931

Oh lord - no detergents ever go near any of my LCDs.

The closer people's finger get to my screen, the closer they get to having them broken off. After 1 warning, anything goes.

No need for the dishwasher, save some water and energy and use just a drop of dish washing soap, some water and brush. Yay for saving the planet!

> "If you touch my display, I'll kill you"

;-)

We make software that replaces hardware equipment control panels with PC-based ones. Almost *Every* customer asks "Can your software be used with a touchscreen", but not one of them (to my knowledge)has ever installed a touchscreen-operated system.

Ok. I clean my keyboard and I clean my desk. But only with normal detergent (no with powerful antibacterial soap). And the good reason is that if you do this you are just creating strain of resistant bacteria and you are weakening you immune system. Children living in "too clean" homes are very prone to asthma. So clean you stuff but not too much. Stay rational...
Please read this before beginning your war against bacterias:
http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/eid/vol7no2/larson.htm - "From the public health perspective, more frequent use of current hygiene practices may not necessarily be better (i.e., perhaps sometimes clean is "too clean"), and the same recommendations cannot be applied to all users or situations."
http://healthlink.mcw.edu/article/1031002421.html
http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/biology/b103/f01/web3/bond.html
(eat french cheese. They'll prepare your body for just anything...)

I could care less about germs, but I spend/waste so much time cleaning mice and keyboards in computer labs. It's almost like popping bubble wrap, scraping all the gunk off of the '\' key (the dirtiest key, in my experience). I usually don't do a single productive thing until \456789, spacebar, Delete, Home, Page Up, Page Down, End, the num pad, and the part of the keyboard above the arrow keys have had their gunk scratched off.

Oh, and I touch monitors religiously. I touched mine no less than 4 times will reading this article and the comments.

Jeff, do you use an Ergonomic 4000 keyboard? I dismantled my previous Ergonomic Keyboard (a Natural Pro) very easily, shoved it in the dishwasher and it came out as good as new.

Recently I tried dismantling one of my Ergo 4000s (spilt green tea on it and the left shift, enter and #3 key stopped working) and after removing the 20 or so screws round the back, couldn't get the keys off etc. It's a nightmare to take a part and I can't find a tutorial on the web either.

It's nice being able to shove it in the dishwasher to get that as good as new look. Don't think I'll be able to do it with the Ergo 4000 though (I really don't want to soak the circuit board).

A trick I used to speed up drying is to put the device (soaked cell phones, keyboards, etc) in the air-conditioner closet (obviously for those that have the integrated system). I keep a fishnet baggy in the closet for drying things out quickly. It dries things out in a few hours because of the massive volume of air moving through a small cross section.

Just a quick note on cleaning screens. I was unfortunate enough to be a tech support agent for the sony vaio range of laptops over here in Ireland and you'd be amazed at the amount of void warrentys because people wash screens with small amounts of screen wash(specific for lcd screens by the way). Some brands destroy the LCD screens. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!!!

"... casually chatting up a fellow programmer. ..."

Erm, shouldn't you be doing your romancing in your _own_ time ?
(http://www.chambersharrap.co.uk/chambers/features/chref/chref.py/main?query=chat&title=21st)

I use pretty much public computers quite a bit, and all the monitors have finger prints and stuff on them. I don't really care if people touch them, it's nothing to do with me. At home though there's no one near my computer except me, so no reason to touch it. Not sure how I would feel about it though, depends if they eave much of a mark.

As for putting electronics in the dishwasher... I'd do it if I had a cheap keyboard I don't need. However, I don't want to put my Microsoft 4000 through. Especially considering that I accidently put my iPod Nano through the wash a few months ago and now the backlight doesn't work. I need to clean my monitor, it seems to collect a bit of dust.

OK you convinced me. I'll put my notebook in my dishwasher and see what happens.

I keep a dry paint 1-1/2" paint brush next to my monitor and use it for dusting the keyboard just about everyday. It does a pretty good job of getting into the tiny plastic grooves and what not. As for *really* cleaning, I keep a container of Lysol Disinfecting Wipes and use those on keyboard, mouse (mouse wheels can get nasty), desk, phone, etc. After reading this post I'll probably be more OCD now, thanks Jeff! (Did I mention I never touch door knobs, either?)

As a Unix and C programmer, I am required to have a beard. This means that I inevitably have a few bits of trimmed hairs and, yes, some dandruff like schmutz, that fall down whenever I scratch my chin while reading or thinking about something. This used to all fall into my keyboard, until I got a zany and expensize completely split keyboard (from Kinesis -- I recommend it if you have discomfort on any normal or typical ergo keyboards or just like having many different positions for your hands).

And yeah, I eat lunch at my desk while reading the web. THose crumbs used to inevitably end up in my keyboard.

Now with the split keyboard it just lands in the space between on my desk.

I also have the luxury of a machine shop at my place of employment with an air compressor, really gets keyboards clean.

Also, there is an advantage to the boring beige or grey classic PC colors -- dirt and oil and schmutz doesn't show as well there. (Just darker grime buildup.)

Maybe we need some better mouse pointing options. How about a little tool/extsension that makes the mouse pointer blink or turn into a circle or glow or something when you hold down some key combination and click?

...

Also, dirt and stuff is ugly and un-neat, but it's not worth it to worry too much about every last germ on your stuff. Humans have pretty good immune systems. Try to avoid catching things, but don't try to use antibacterial chemicals to try to do the job of your immune system. Your immune system is a highly tuned defensive system. Antibacterial chemicals (toxins to bacteria) are a blunt nuke of all microorganisms on your hands or whatever, benign along with the possibly bad.

(not that you shouldn't use any soap -- actual soap (not detergent and other chemicals, which often pretends to be soap by being placed with all the real soap in the market) to wash is great)

Jeez, such sadness.

We are apes with a penchant for scratching our arses, picking our noses and putting one anothers urinary genitalia in our mouths. We are dirty dirty little apes. Trouble is, some of us can get more than a little bit cranky at times and it seems like a majority of that crankyness works in programming.

Your keyboard is an input device - you don't look at it so why bother what it looks like, so long as it works. You are much germier than your keyboard no matter how filthy or hairy it is. Mine has a nice lint of hair and fluff between the keys which is very effective in stopping the crunchy bits from getting back of the keys and gumming up the works. The key faces are polished bright and even parts of some letter legends are wearing away, but around the key edges is like a little crust of grime which tends to connect with the lint matt. My keyboard is nearly ORGANIC and without question must support a diversity of life forms. So what? So do I, every cell of the human body is outnumbered 10:1 by the life forms that infest and cohabit our bodies. But then - we are dirty dirty little apes.

Your screen is a communication device - mostly communicating with just you granted, and also a visual communication granted, so you need to be able to see what is displayed on it in order for that communication to be effective. But communication is not just visual. The human animal chatters to itself almost continuously and when thinking problems though, pointing and touch and hand gestures are an integral part of effective communication.

So when someone comes to talk a project through with you, remember to encourage them to touch the screen (touch it yourself to give then permission and encouragement)as part of their communication process and try to pay attention to them, not the fingermarks - that's what they are there for - you are being paid to communicate, not to get all anal about YOUR space and YOUR screen. Afterwards you can be cranky and get the wipes out to remove the smudges.

You might be brilliant at coding, but if you fail to communicate then you are a crap programmer because programming is 90% communication (and you can't communicate if you are getting up your arse about fingerprints)

Obligatory xkcd reference: http://xkcd.com/237/

Are screen touchers the same people that touch photos?
Why? Why do you need to touch the photo? I know it's a picture of you and that you were fatter/thinner/drunk or whatever, but I don't need your fingerprint in the middle of the photo!

I personally use a plastic cover for the keyboard.. i mean you have to get used a little bit but surely it keeps the keyboard clean, avoiding the oily and shiny spots that get on the buttons after you eat pizza while update your bookmards.
you can buy it everywhere for not that much, i mean its always an option.
Regards..
Donnie

Yes, you ARE a germophobe. You are a fastidious, anal-retentive nit. And my hat's off to you.

The Windows equivalent to Mac's Keyboard Cleaner is Toddle Trap by 1Hour Software. You can find it here: http://www.donationcoder.com/Software/Skrommel/index.html#ToddlerTrap

Two words: Trackball Mouse.

*shudder*

You want to see some 'potential health hazards', you should see the gunk in my mouse. lol

Still, I'd never replace it. It's the kind where you control the mouse with both the index- and middle-finger -- while the thumb does left-click and the ring-finger does right-click. Way more precise than those whacky thumb ones or the pseudo-videogame ones I've seen. :-P Besides, fits my hand in a natural way.

--Kevin

Apparently Nathan has too much time on his hands since he is posting so often instead of programming.

i have special toothbrush and microfiber cloth for cleaning keyboard. You can't clean every little corner with cloth, so that's when toothbrush becomes handy.
Toothbrush is also good for cleaning dusty motherboards/memory chips etc!

Here you go. An easily washable keyboard:

http://www.adesso.com/products_detail.asp?productid=358

I just use a damp washcloth to clean my laptop screen. I'm not even sure how the smudges get there because I never touch it. Like glasses, screens seems to just be a magnet for funk. I can't enjoy using my laptop if it is smudgy. Much like "Clean house, clean mind", the same principle applies to one's computer as well.

I'll vouch for the dishwasher method personally - I've washed several keyboards this way and never had an issue. I never felt the need to disassemble them either.

It does generally take several days to dry completely, as you mentioned, so be sure you have a spare before doing this. If you're in a pinch, you can lean the wet keyboard up against a box fan on high to speed up the process dramatically.

One thing I haven't tried is washing an IR or Bluetooth keyboard, but I wouldn't expect that to be much different in practice.

After a year at my current job I was able to talk the powers that be to purchase me a Microsoft Natural Keyboard Elite (my all time fav keyboard). Unfortunately, after about a year of use it crapped out on me. For a replacement, I was given a Logitech wireless model from a former employee. Let me tell you, scientists probing the ocean depths looking for new life forms could probably save a lot of time and money by simply directing their efforts to the hand-me-down Logitech I was assigned. Pieces of food, hairs, dried liquids, unnameable gunk...I was forced to disassemble the entire mess, key by key and give it a thorough cleaning.

People are gross. Just monkeys with buttons and hair products! That's why I keep a bottle of hand sanitizer close by.

And your mouse???

IMHO, if you're going to point at something on the screen, that's fine - just don't actually "touch" the screen. It's not hard.

In those rare cases where I have to point more precisely and actually touch the screen, I flip my finger over and tap ever so gently with my fingernail. That way, no disgusting smudges. Ahhh, compromise!

I am the same way. I can't stand someone touching my screens and I try to keep my keyboard very clean (never used the dishwasher before though). I have a ready supply of anti-bacterial wipes, compressed air and one of those brush things to help keep dust off. Some of my co-workers even call me Monk.

When it comes to my work computer, it can be annoying to have someone walk up and touch the monitor, but that's really not the worst thing they do. Someone (or some group of people) seems to think that if you're out of the office (for whatever reason) and they need to leave you a message, the best way to do so is to put a sticky note in the middle of your monitor. This is especially wonderful if it's a long trip and the sticky note sits there long enough to just stop sticking and fall behind the keyboard, leaving a nice strip of dirt and grime the width of the note on the screen (not to mention their grimy fingerprints and streaks from placing the sticky note there), and the note often unseen for days.

I still use old Model M keyboards (plus one recent Unicomp one). I avoid all the problems with dirt on them by using (and keeping a stock) of keyboard covers. They are cheap, can be washed in an abusive manner that would trash regular keyboards (but probably NOT Model M ones :-) ), and when they're worn out can be replaced in a matter of seconds. Problem solved!

If you are a Model M-enlightened programmer, check them out at http://pckeyboards.stores.yahoo.net/prkeco.html

WRT monitors, I'm just as anal as Jeff. Whenever someone puts a finger on my monitor, I stop whatever I was doing (usually explaining something to said person), take out the microfiber cloth and clean the smudge while looking at him/her with an annoyed look.

Here's one that will really get you guys... At a previous job, my boss wouldn't just point to stuff with his pen on his laptop (or anyone else's for that matter). He would actually, fold open the computer like a book, and then DRAW ON THE LCD WITH HIS PEN!. Not only did I get ink on my screen, but in a few cases, I actually had the indentions left in my screen.

On one occasion, he actually caused the LCD matrix to break he pressed so hard...

But that was during the dotcom boom and our company was raking in the money... Those were the days! New computers every year, golf Fridays, and something called a "bonus" that I haven't seen since!

Sometimes, when I water my plants, I use this big glass that I usually drink beer in. I fill it with tap water and then take a sip, then proceed to give it to my plants, taking a sip from time to time.

Just as drinking the same water as my plants reminds me that I'm alive, touching my screen reminds me that I am not simply a brain floating in a fish tank.

Rob Janssen is right that we should point instead of touching if the person asks politely. The problem is that most people I know who hate their screen being touched and who are verbose about it will immediatly become aggravated if your finger gets less than 6 inches away from the screen and proceed to instantly kill you if it's less than 3 inches (or at least have thougts of doing so).

What should a poor human with hands do then, talk in screen coordinates? Sorry, I must be a real bad developer because I can't.

Sure, burst your keyboard with compressed air so you and all your coworkers can breathe in all those fine germs!

Sure, burst your keyboard with compressed air so you and all your coworkers can breathe in all those fine germs!

Ick happens, people. Take a chill and ease up.

Even with my own screen I *always* use the back of my finger and just touch the display with lightly with my fingernail. It has nothing to do with germs (3 kids and houseful of pets will cure you of the whole "germ" thing) and *everything* to do with smudges. They drive me bug$h1t - doesn't matter if they're on my glasses or screen or window. However, if somebody touches my screen with their grubby, greasy little digits I'm certainly not going to go balllistic. It's a smudge - it wipes off.

As for the keyboard - as long as the keys are clean, who GAS? I mean really. Grungy stuff underneath the keys isn't the prettiest thing, but it's not like it's going to ooze up out of the keyboard and grab you (well...not most of the time anyway - there are always exceptions).

If you're *that* concerend about germs and ick it's time to encase yourself in a plastic bubble, immersed in a giant vat of hand sanitizer, in a clean room with sub-micron filtration, far beneath the surface of the planet, surrounded by disinfecting UV lamps...

Reminds me of a sign I saw years ago in a public john, "Please don't throw toothpicks in the toilet. The crabs have learned how to pole vault."

"There's even a neat Mac utility program, Keyboard Cleaner, which will lock out your keyboard while you're thoroughly wiping it down."

Or - in this era of USB - you could just unplug your keyboard. :)

I have said the same thing many times about there being two types of people, those that touch displays and those that don't.

I came to this conclusion after noticing the same group of people touching my monitor when talking about things and then noticing that group of people had a layer of finger grime all over their own monitors.

Which lead to the corollary: There are two types of people, those with spotless monitors, and those with so many fingerprints on their monitors that they wouldn't even notice one more.

For me it's not that it's disgusting or germy but that when my monitor is completely spotless except for a few fingerprints, they keep drawing my eye to them. After years of failing in every attempt to just ignore them, I now just sigh, go grab a damp paper towel, and clean the stupid fingerprints off before I attempt to get back to work.

I also cut people off before they touch the monitor. As soon as they start pointing, I interrupt them and say, "Please don't touch the monitor." They usually get annoyed and say they weren't going to touch the monitor. They're usually lying. Regardless, once I say that then they're make a point not to touch it, saving me a cleaning trip.

By the way, I've found if you just use warm water, a paper towel, and gentle pressure, it cleans just fine without scratching.

I'm not alone, aha! I go positively ballistic if I catch anyone touching my screen(s). I came in to work this morning to discover that my boss had polished the desks, and had used the waxy/dusty rag to wipe my screen. ARGH! Did I want it smearing with crap? No! Did it even need "cleaning"? NO!

*deep breath*

Over in the UK we have an IT qualification called the A+ (also known as IT Essentials) and one of the questions is about the best way to clean your keyboard. The correct answer is to put it in the dishwasher, so it doesn't surprise me to read that people are actually doing it...

I do that with my mouse too (the disassemble and dishwasher thing). Works fine. I'm still using my first MS IntelliEye Explorer (not wireless).

As for keyboards, I just recently threw away my old IBM 102 key DIN plug keyboard for a curious reason.

You see, those old keyboards didn't have rubber pieces to push the keyboards back up, like they do now, they had rubber foam. You know, that stuff chair and sofa seats are often made from.

The fascinating thing ? After almost 20 years of compressing and depressing the foam, the little bubbles it's made of burst one by one, so often used keys would eventually become so weak that their decompression force wasn't enough to push up the keys anymore.

For a few years, I moved the badly used foam pieces to lesser used keys (like the upper F* row, or the print key), but eventually, too many were so broken down that the keyboard just didn't work anymore.

I almost cried when I had to throw that old buddy away. It had codes to Zak McKracken written on the side with permanent markers, and it had kinks in the top row I carved in there when I played my first online games of Doom via KALI and thought I was really bad ass for marking frags on my keyboard (I was not). The cord had three almost broken places where one cat and two different gold hamsters gnawed on it. The plug was patched up with Smurf covered band aids because I opened it to solder in a new pin after one broke off.

Man, nostalgia can be cruel :(

As for cleaning keyboards, Jerry Pournelle at Byte used to always say that he'd take his keyboards into the shower with him and give them a good scrubbing.

As long as you allow several days for thorough drying, that would probably work fine for most keyboards. Obviously it's only practical if you have an extra.

i just vacuum with the brush attachment (dyson root 6 - good suction!) about once a week and give it a good wipe down once a month or so.

For those of us that have really trashed out our laptop keypads, I've found them very easy to replace and not very expensive either. The last one I did cost about $30.00 and took less than 5 minutes.

>My husband sent me this post as we've come to blows over me touching
>his monitor and he just looks at me in disgust when I show him >something on my monitor and point it out with my fingers all over it.

OK. Show of hands. How many people are picturing BlackMax as looking just like the kid in the picture at the top of the article?

/raisehand

I remember a guy who would freak if someone pointed their finger at his monitor within a foot of the surface. It was just plain annoying. When he was gone from his cube, people would go in and smudge up his monitor with fingerprints, just out of spite.

Oh yes I know all about the filthy keyboards. A previous developer who I took over for left an ABSOLUTELY DISGUSTING keyboard covered in yellow stains from his excessive sweating. I tried everything to clean it up to no avail but I eventually just ended up buying a new keyboard. I'm real particular about folks touching my keyboard nowadays.

We once had a contractor leave, and I found the keyboard he left behind too disgusting to stay in the same cubicle with. He wasn't exactly the cleanest guy in the world. One of those overweight guys who has trouble keeping his shirt tucked in. He used to eat at his keyboard too.

Some coworkers and I took apart the keyboard and hand cleaned it. There was an *amazing* amount of crumbs and crud in there. Probably an entire sandwich worth. But of course some of the keys refused to work after we dried it and put it back together. We eventually had to report it broken and get a new one for that machine.

Unless it is designed to be cleaned that way, I really wouldn't count on a "cleaned" keyboard being usable again. Sure, go ahead and try if you want. Just make sure to buy the replacement first, so that if (when) it doesn't work, you are just out a backup, not your primary keyboard.

The worst is LOLing so hard and so suddenly that you don't have time to prepare and end up spraying spittle all over your own monitor. Then you have no one to blame but yourself. :(

Amen brother!

I also believe they must be too blind to see the fingerprints blurring my beautiful wall paper.

And what's with using PENS ON AN LCD MONITOR?!?!?! How'd you become a programmer with no brain cells?!?!

You need to print yourself a nice "if you touch my monitor, I will poke you in the eye" sign ( http://www.morevisual.com/poke/ ). I have one on my monitor. It gets the point across. I had a visiting developer from India, pull his hand back like it touched a hot poker when he read it, apparently he took it quite literally ( not a bad thing :) )...

Ah yes, the dishwasher. DEC's VT100 keyboard could famously be cleaned in a dishwasher - no disassembly required, or so I'm told. Of course, each key press on that thing required more force than on a manual typewriter and made a louder click than a card punch.

I guess I'm not nerd enough, I just clean my keyboard when they stop working, which is every 3 or 4 months.

I am with the majority of posters here. I cannot stand anyone touching my screen. I had once worked with a guy that used dry erase markers on his screen (CRT) to mark out line grids. After a while the grease in the pen left permanent marks on the monitor (they are glass, but still coated). I hated having to work with him at his desk because letters would be blurry and make the process difficult. It would not clean off no matter what he used.

I will usually use Lysol on my keyboard and phone (spray into the rag and wipe them with the rag) before leaving for home (every other month or so).

> M Kenyon

My boss at the time was a hardware engineer that was promoted to look after the software development team, so EVERYTHING to the man was just a tool. He would get mad if we couldn't give him a good estimate of how long it would take to write something... his reason... "If I was building a splice enclosure and told my boss I didn't know how long it would take, I'd get fired." He had no real concept of software or what it involved. We weren't building a box to hold cables... we were writing software to detect faults in the fiber...

And like I said, this was during the big money times for the Fiber Optic Cable industry... we were blowing money like no one's business. The software I worked on was a loss leader for the company... something we had to offer, but they didn't really care if we made money or not. Probably one reason the software group was laid off after the bust!

WA

Doesn't anyone else think that it's the office cleaner's job to wipe down keyboards/mice/screens/telephones?

Having said that I regularly bring in some Mr. Muscle and give the place a wipe down, but I always feel like I shouldn't have to!

At the last job I had people used to CONSTANTLY touch other folks monitors.

I had gotten two new flatscreens and it wasn't a day later that someone 'poked' it leaving a nice fingerprint right in the center.

So I put a post it note next to them that said, "Touch the screen, lose a finger".

I really hate it when people try to touch my LCD monitors. When I say touch, I mean, they stab it with their fingers. LCDs break that way, stupid!

You all sound so childish about your monitors being touched. Its Just A Piece of Plastic! Pair programming with two 22" LCDs, the other coder is driving (controlling keyboard and mouse) and something needs to be pointed out, I'm going to point at it with my finger. OMG !! END OF THE WORLD !! FIRE!FIRE!FIRE!FIRE!!!!

Most of the time my finger wont touch the monitor. Sometimes that perfect storm of circumstances do align against me. I'll be eating a Bagel, and some of the cream cheese gets on my finger, and so I lick my finger clean, and before finishing the bagel I point at something on the screen, and accidentally touch the screen. On those very seldom occasions it leaves a small smudge. woop-dee-doo... i've got those lint-less cloths at my desk, and i just wipe the smudge off.

Sounds like the problem most of you have is with people who have Dirty Hands. Well if someones got dirty hands, then they should just be told to go wash their hands, it may seem rude the first couple times, but quickly people start remembering to wash their hands.

My monitor is spotlessly clean, and my hands are clean, doing a touch test, touching the monitor with my finger doesn't even leave a smudge.

The Keyboard-Mouse interface is horrible, and Touch screen displays are coming. What are you going to do then? crawl under your desks and hide? No of course not, dirty fingers are just going to become more taboo.

So get everyone headed in the right direction now. When someone touches your monitor and leaves a smudge don't get mad at a user using a computer in a completely natural way, get mad at them for having disgustingly dirty hands.

I hear that Prozac and Lexapro are good for those who are germa-phobic.

So, anybody got some tips on a keyboard that's easy to clean? The standard designs seem intended to suck down dirt and trap it where you can't get to it. Without removing every single key top, anyway. Maybe they want you to buy a new one every 3 months.

At my college, we had these Solaris computers with 19" screens... and every one of them was covered in smudges everywhere, it was aweful. Cleaning them didn't seem to work very well either.

I gotta try the keyboard/dishwasher thing, I just don't want to have to wait a week to use it again.

Fry's has keyboards for $5. I just consider them disposable and buy in bulk.

Oh. My. God.

I bet you're sick all the time. People with germophobic cleaning fetishes are the most often ill people I know.

Also, freaking out about things like people touching your screen is the reason all the normal people are afraid of the IT department. A little tolerance goes a long way. I find that my projects become a lot easier when I can relate to the business folks as if we are both human beings.

@AC: It's called multitasking ho. Something you won't be able to do on your computer if you don't have a keyboard because it is in the dish washer.

>The Keyboard-Mouse interface is horrible, and Touch screen displays
>are coming. What are you going to do then? crawl under your desks and
>hide? No of course not, dirty fingers are just going to become more
>taboo.

Most of the systems I've written software for have had touch displays because someone thought they would be a huge seller for the system. I've only seen one of those systems in which users continued using the touch screen after a week or so of use, and in that case there was no way to plug in a keyboard and mouse without opening the case.

There are things that make sense with a touch display, and software can be designed to make the most of it (with REALLY BIG BUTTONS). On the other hand, there are things that programmers do with computers, and for the most part they don't work well with touch displays. I don't even use the touch screen on my phone any more than I absolutely have to, though I do like the clock interface for setting the time on alarms in Windows Mobile (otherwise the interface is notoriously bad for a touch interface unless you use the stylus all the time).

This is why I bought the iSkin when I first got my Mac. It's nice to the touch and easy to clean--just rinse in water and soap. Of course the sound of tapping keys may be music to the ears of some people, but I've gotten used to the soft touch.

However, I would say the best practice would be to have a hand sanitizer (anti-bacterial) sitting next on your workarea, next to your monitor or something.

Don't forget about your cruddy mouse, too.

I teach IT in a school. It's best not to look between the keys.

Why do people constantly compare dirty things to toilet seats? I clean my toilet more frequently than I clean some parts of my kitchen - and I bet you're all the same.

If the gunge and dirt in our keyboards is so hazardous, how come we're not ill? Could it be we have immunities to the things living on surfaces we come into contact with daily?

How about we do what our parents kept telling us - wash your hands before eating, and don't stick them in your mouth.

Touching monitors is a crime that should be punished with amputation or something else appropriate. Cleaning shiny screens is impossible!

Keyboards are disgusting: http://www.xckd.com/237/

I am solidly the type who never touches their display and hate it when someone else touches mine. What I did realize at one point, though, was that I'd live longer if I *accepted* the other type of programmer, and, without getting bent, simply cleaned my screen after "he" left. No rise in blood pressure, no resentment, no losing the point discussed.

You know what? If no one touched my screen, I would clean it way less often, and it would actually be dirtier!!

Jeff,

how about hosing down the keyboard? You know, with a hose :) I tried that couple of times and it was awesome. Fun for the whole family. Not so much fun looking for blown off keys in the grass but that can be sorted out by settling on moderate water pressure. Just soap up the darn thing and then hose it off.

For cleaning laptop keyboards, I use photo lense brush. It works great. And some travel wet wipes (baby wipes will also work :))

I worked with a dude who would pointtouch so vigorously that the flat screen tilted backward every time he made a point.

Our hardware manager shocked most of the office when she put some filthy keyboards in the dishwasher, myself included. Thanks for enlightening me. She'll be happy to see this thorough article.

thanks! Just prompted me to wash everything in my cube.

Yep, I can't stand it. Plus, without fail, it's the people with the most disgusting keyboards and monitors themselves that absolutely insist on touching my screen to point at something when actual pointing from a few inches away would be more than enough.

Man, this would have made a great Seinfeld episode, along the lines of the "low talker" and the "close talker": the "screen toucher".

I have been using these Artensia products for a while and I love them. Theonly problem I have is that people always seem to steal them from my desk. They have used natural products so they clean your computer gear and protect you from chemicals...etc.

www.artensia.com

Sounds like me; I can't stand fingerprints (on anything, really). My mouse, keyboard, and monitor are holy relics, as far as I'm concerned, and I'm the only one holy enough to touch them. I had a guy where I worked once get so fed up with my OCD, he literally licked my mouse. Yes, he picked it up, stuck out his tongue, and licked it. I about puked. It took nearly half a day of cleaning before I was ready to use that mouse again. I still get chills thinking about it.

The Windows equivalent to Mac's Keyboard Cleaner: unplug!
People forget about the simplest solutions. Why go through the hassle of unplugging the keyboard, if you can download some nifty software that renders your keyboard useless (what was the key combination again that re-enables my keyboard? Let me google that - oh crap!)

Filthy keyboards are the computer age way to ensure survival of the fittest!

>>thanks! Just prompted me to wash everything in my cube.
Look what you did Jeff!
The hit in productivity that you caused throughout the world is mind-blowing - the DOW dropped another 84 points.

Jeff,

For what it's worth I've put a Microsoft Office Keyboard (http://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-E17-00002-Office-Keyboard/dp/B00005NVBO) with a lot of sticky keys (some coke fell on it) in a dishwasher WITHOUT the hot drying cycle. I never cleaned the keyboard after the spill and it was sitting on myself for 3 years.

After the dishwashing rinse, I let it dry outside for 5 days. This is to ensure all the water is all dried up to prevent any short-circuits.

Result: squeaky clean keyboard. But it wasn't perfect - some grime still did exist underneath some keys. I guess if I pulled out all the keys it would have been a perfect job.

I'm fairly relaxed about my screen. I don't like to touch it but I don't really get upset about people touching my screen.

What does amaze me though is watching people touch there monitor with such force it visibly sways back and forth. Several people I've worked with use force just short of shattering the monitor and having to take a quick trip to the ER for stitches. I continually amazes me.

Yes, Air Duster, so we can kick all of that nastiness into the air instead of down in the tray of our keyboards.

BRILLIANT!

I hate it when people compare dirty things to toilet seats. What touches toilet seats? Asses. And what do asses touch? Toilet seats and the inside of your underwear. That's about it.

Almost every test shows that the handle to the bathroom door is many times more infected than the toilet seat.

You want to check something for nastyness, try the doorknob to any busy restaurant door. Or a toothbrush. Or the inside of your shoes.

I used to work with a guy who ate at KFC at least 3 times a week and usually brought his chicken back to work. He would munch away and type and munch and type. You couldn't even see the plastic below the keys on his keyboard for all of the chicken batter bits down between the keys. When he left the company we threw his keyboard into the dumpster from the roof of the building just to excorsize those demons.

I have it easy. I have a tablet, so that means lots of hand grease on it - I have to touch it whenever I use the tablet part. However, this model actually has a glass screen. So it is really, really easy to clean (and it looks great when freshly cleaned). Also, pencils and pens have no effect. It's like writing on a window. I should use dry-erase markers... =P

Nice article though. I need to clean my keyboard. 6 months old, and never cleaned before. Used 14 hours a day. Really dirty. I tend to eat t here too (only place to sit down in my dorm).

Daniel

To J.Stoever:

"I almost cried when I had to throw that old buddy away. It had codes to Zak McKracken written on the side with permanent markers,[...]"

I'd have kept the keyboard in my "sentimental stuff" box. *I* have my
Pro-audio Spectrum 16 sound card stored away. I did a lot of cool things with it and simply refused to dump it when the time came.

Duncan said: "Doesn't anyone else think that it's the office cleaner's job to wipe down keyboards/mice/screens/telephones?".

Yes, it is. But they never do it right. We're anal people, mind you. :-D

Once, in my previous job, one of the cleaners left a nasty scratch in a 2-months-old monitor. No one wanted to assume responsibility, claming "it was already like that when we found it". We were stuck with it for a year until my boss reported that it had stopped functioning [1] and had to be replaced (the monitor).

[1] Monitors have this tendency to not work anymore if the power cord disappears...

Re: Vizeroth

>I've only seen one of those systems in which users continued using the touch screen after a week or so of use.

You are correct that touch screens are often used where they don't belong, and as the technology gets cheaper the chance for mis-use will only increase. That doesn't mean its going to become less common, and it doesn't mean their aren't good uses for it.

Movie theater automated ticket purchasing machines are using touch screen technology in a very natural way. And the usage may be limited, but as you pointed out PDA/Cellphones are a common implementation of touch screen tech.

The multi-touch technology is only now starting to be exploited as a consumer product, and as the costs go down I think we will start to see this more and more.

So while touch screen solutions are not always successful, they do have a place in society, and they are only going to become more common as time goes on.

You said it!

This reminds me of my favorite April Fools Day joke I played on people at work. I used a little java program to send out emails from 'Ops Support' stating that the new flat panel monitors that people had been getting have touch-screen technology built in and that the business would like it evaluated. It was amazing how many tech-savvy people were poking there screen trying to open a document.

"When I said there were two types of programmers, here's what I really meant:

Programmers who touch displays with their greasy, disgusting, bacteria-addled fingers.
Programmers who don't. "

Too bad there is only one type of littlebrother:
Brothers who touch displays with their greasy, disgusting, bacteria-addled fingers.

Btw, anyone tried to remove the dust from a CRT-screen that's been on all day using a feather duster.
Smack! All the dust in the duster sucks onto the monitor because of the static electricity. :D

I beg to differ! The screens are for touching and pointing and I do it all the time!!

(I have noticed that my LCD screens don't show fingerprints until you turn them off. CRT monitors definitely do...)

More irritating than other people leaving their fingerprints, is one self leaving one's fingerprints.

I know I do. And It drove me nuts when I realized, so now I try pointing with the nail side of the finger, I just can't avoid touching the screen, I will not beat myself and I'm pretty fast running, so I doubt anyone can catchme to kill me XD

Hooray for huge useless images in blog posts! I thought we'd lost you...

I heard ATM touch screens are worse than a keyboard. Think of that next time your getting some cash.

Compressed air dusters are great for cleaning, but terrible for the environment. Here's a quick link with some alternatives. http://www.treehugger.com/files/2007/05/compressed_air.php

I laughed out loud when I read this! "As you can see here (putting down stickybun to touch Atwoods screen), we have a nice circle of sticky bun for loops" Classic - Jeff!

LOL - put down your sticky bun... heh

I will occasionally touch monitors, however I ALWAYS flip my hand over and use the back of my fingernail...no smudges, no gunk.

It's even more fun when you're showing a superior officer something and they start touching the screen. You want to kill them -- I mean you could because you have a gun -- but you can't even yell at them because of their fancy-pants rank!

Wow... great topic as I can be pretty anal about this myself. ".. touch my screen, I'll kill you." - hahah! Strangely enough- if someone touches my laptop without permission I will threaten them, I despise anyone who thinks they can simply use another person's laptop, even without asking them first!? I literally flipped out on the last person that did this. Laptops, to me, can be very personal and more so than a desktop- this is kind of obvious. Leave people's laptops alone.

One of the first things I do when moving into a new cube is sanitize the keyboard. This includes turning the device upside down while applying a vigorous shaking. The amount of boogers, food crumbs, hair and other oddities that fall out can be quite alarming. Long live Lysol and Windex Wipes.

All you compusive screen-jabbers who call the rest of us anal or insensitive:

You are simply inconsiderate for smudging up the screen I have to look at all day and making me go to the effort of cleaning your grease off.

Worse, you are insulting, for thinking we somehow couldn't follow a simple pointing gesture a few more inches to the screen without your fingertip actually contacting the pixels in question.

When you point out a person at a meeting or party, do you run right up and poke them? "This is my friend Bob! (POKE) This guy right here! (POKE POKE.)"

Getting a bit obsessive-compulsive there are you not? Who ever died from a keyboard acquired infection?

Your immune system is incredibly sophisticated and provided you look after yourself (eat well, do some exercise) it should have no problem fighting of such bacteria.

Wow. This is really turning into a OCD discussion...

Touch my monitor all you want, I couldn't care less. Same goes for my mouse, keyboard or any office accessories for that matter.

I bet you guys are not the outdoors type of guys, huh?

Why wait a week for the keyboard to dry. You already put it in the dishwasher. Why not through it in the dryer?

Yes, this is a pet peeve as well. Especially when I have paid for the monitor.

3 problems:

1. Fingerprints make chunks of text unreadable.
2. Finger pressure on LCD screens kills pixels.
3. Fingernails and pens scratch LCD panels leading to problem 1.

At home, my EIZO has had the good fortune to never have been cleaned except with a non-contact puffer to remove dust. The monitor I had before that was killed by a warranty repair: it went away mint and came back smeared and scratched with dead pixels from being vigorously rubbed with what must have been a muddy rag. After nearly 12 months of argument (during which time I bought my EIZO), they replaced it with a model worth 1/3 the original value (thanks, Mitsubishi Australia), after initially trying to replace it with the bottom model (it was the top model that they had wrecked).

The other one which really annoys me is people who feel obliged to resize and reposition my conveniently layed out windows to their liking (usually everything smaller and placed in the dead centre of the screen, one on top of the other, because for some reason they can't read a window in any other size or position or tolerate having more than one window visible at once) and roaming technicians who feel obliged to do this AND adjust my chair and monitor height to suit them so they can spend 2 minutes at my desk applying a patch.

"It was amazing how many tech-savvy people were poking there screen trying to open a document."

We had someone employed as an "IT security expert" warning people about the dangers of ID theft on TV last night. Despite his "professional credentials" he admitted to recently having had his eBay, Facebook, MySpace, Internet Banking, and PayPal all hijacked at once through giving them all the same username and password and entering his credentials into a number of phishing emails.

"Compressed air dusters are great for cleaning, but terrible for the environment."

Mine's a photographer's blower brush bulb with the brush removed: 100% manual, no pollutants, no refills and costs about $2-3. Lasts as long as your fingers are movable and the decades it takes the rubber to perish (mine is 25 years old and still going strong).

Come to think of it, there is something worse.

People who don't turn their head away from your screen when sneezing.

I hate it too when people touch my monitor. Excelent post!

you must really hate the iphone!

Of course, you can't get hair in the keyboard.

Btw I have been using klearscreen from frys for the past year on my monitors and iPhone

I try not to chat *up* my fellow programmers, at least not by showing them code fragments. I dont think the laydeez find it interesting...

My son vomited on the keyboard. I disassembled and washed, didnt work again. This was one of the fancy ones with extra buttons on the top connected to a little pcb with an elastomeric strip.

Given a do-over I would wash it assembled and then leave it in a hot car to dry out.

Quoting:

>remove that racist nathan.
>
>spemless on May 13, 2008 03:02 AM

I couldn't agree more. And I don't want to hear from him about how he is black, or I don't understand his street cool, or whatever. His racist name calling is not appropriate and serves only to fully demonstrate his lack of intelligence. Delete it.

When I used to work at Future Shop (a Canadian electronics retailer owned by Best Buy) we used to push Monster screen clean all the time for monitors and TVs. I know the sales guys pushed it because the markup was high, but we techs recommended it because it was just that much better than any alternative. I still recommend it to my friends to this day.

I think there is some magic in that bottle, because I swear my TV gets less dusty after using Monster on it.

Oh man, my belly was jiggling when I read "Poky McSmudgypants." I totally agree about a monitor being a hands-free device.

Well, thanks a lot. On your advice Jeff I put my Vostro in the dishwasher and I think it must have shorted the battery or something. Posted from my Blackberry, of course.

Distilled water works better for soaking electronics--it doesn't leave deposits on the circuit board as it dries.

for my keyboard - vacuuming once in a few months, and wiping the keys with a soft cloth damp with some soap or detergent.

for my display - a dry and clean microfiber cloth..

thats all

This devices are to be used, not worshipped.
Haha!

I hate screen-pokers too. But no-one touches my screen because I work from home...so WHY THE HELL does my screen still look like a camel has french-kissed it? Its covered in marks and I don't have a clue where they come from.

good blog keep it live !

About the dirty keyboards. It's quite simple. Just replace it whenever it gets too dirty. Cleaning keyboards is a lost cause anyway, because you're not likely to get rid of all the food etc. that's stuck in between the keys unless you pick the thing apart. I guess another solution would be to stop eating at your computer...

I decided to take your suggestion and clean my keyboard with the dishwasher. I'll be billing you for a new MacBook Pro, thank you very much.

I'm not going to go back and count, but it looks like the obsessive anal clean engineer personality is outnumbering the absent minded scruffy grungy engineer personality in these comments, though there is a healthy middle ground I think (hopefully).

I decided to clean my keyboard in the dishwasher last night. So far, so good. I disassembled it only because it's just a basic keyboard (not fully of volumne controls, scroll wheels, etc). It did a really good job cleaning it. Just hope it continues to work after I put it back together.

Christian sid: "This devices are to be used, not worshipped.".

You obviously haven't used a Model M keyboard. :-)

I really think it's time to go shopping for a new keyboard.

Maybe a Dvorak one, no less :O

I have that same laminate tile in my kitchen - i absolutely hate it!

I'm not sure about the validity of the reasoning here but: I used to work at a warehouse during my summer work days between winter and fall semesters and one rule at this particular shop was that if you sprayed yourself or someone else with compressed air (in this case, it was from the shop compressor) you were fired, on the spot, no questions asked. Apparently it's possible (albeit unlikely) to cause a bubble in the blood stream by forcing air through the pores of a person's skin using compressed air - which is potentially lethal.

I find that standard strength white vinegar works much better than water for cleaning laptop/LCD panel screens. Water or rubbing alcohol is better for old glass tubes.

microfiber cloths are, of course, required.

quit touching my screen.

Not cleaning the keyboard: from this we can also get infected from virus:
http://ramjeeawon.info/HTML/virusFromComputers

does anyone remember someone making an air duster that was refillable via a small crank or hand pump? They made it years ago but I can't seem to find them anymore. I go through 3 cans a month and at $4 each, this adds up over time.

Steve-O wrote
"Apparently it's possible (albeit unlikely) to cause a bubble in the blood stream by forcing air through the pores of a person's skin using compressed air - which is potentially lethal."

I think this is why you should avoid blowing in the vagina also. :)

http://www.news.com/8301-13860_3-9943986-56.html?tag=nefd.lede

You will soon be a minority.

Eh. If you don't exercise your immune system, you're gonna lose it.

Want a clean keyboard? No problem!
http://www.virtual-laser-keyboard.com/
This projects a keyboard on your desk, so all you have to do is keep your desktop clean. You can also get a similar monitor.

Surely this is a fantastic opportunity for the budding entrepreneurial engineer among us!

Make a keyboard that is designed from the get-go to be able to be disassembled in less than 60 seconds...

Couldn't have said it any better.

This is SO true!

The keyboards and mice at university are always like.. uh.. "i-don't-want-to-touch-this".
Can't people just wash their hands after eating or various other situations..?

I am not alone. I feel better now hearing that not only me get "morder instincts" when somebody touches their screen.

I have one secret I never wanted to share with anone, but I desoded to do so today and let you know that.

Before I seat at the computer I wash my hands.
After some time (when you get a shower or wash your hands) body naturally gets this kind of protection-layer (say moist).

So, I was forced to wash my hands again after few hours of coding.

The solution I found was to buy some nice soft gloves and use them while working.

I don't use them always... but quite often.
Since this time my keyboard is brilliant shining, septic clean and... I feel much more better now.

Greets
aristo

The reason keyboards -- like doorknobs, restaurant menus, and rented car steering wheels, among other things -- have X times as many nasties as toilet seats is simple: pretty much everybody's bathroom is full of a huge array of germicidal sprays, washes, soaps, foams, and what-have you.

Hell, in the toilet you're probably in greater danger from all the chemical residues than you are from the bacteria.

One other kick at the can: bacteria are not all that baaa-aad. Polio, back when it existed, was a rich people's disease, because rich kids never got exposed to the low-grade background viral load that poor kids hit by running around barefoot. Athma is almost certainly caused by too much housecleaning, and washing your children's hands too much is settng them up for a lifetime of common colds.

http://dilbert.com/dyn/str_strip/000000000/00000000/0000000/000000/00000/6000/600/6371/6371.strip.gif

is this what we talking about?

All the keyboards I own have been through the dishwasher. No special prep is needed; place upside down to facilitate draining, full cycle with soap, shake thoroughly to get rid of excess water, dry for 24 hours.
I've put one motherboard through this process with no ill effects.

Wow. A motherboard. That's hard core, man. My hat is off to you.

You couldn't be more right. Don't touch my display, and certainly don't tap it with a pen. Thank you very much.

I guess I have a double stan