Although we thought they'd already solved the problem of keyboard spills with that fancy
Batmobile-like armor plating, Lenovo is apparently still looking for ways to keep your 'board safe from dangerous beverages, as they're showing off a waterproof model at their Lenovo Innovation Center in China. Not much is known about the high-tech shenanigans going on inside the keyboard to keep the circuitry running (we suspect nanobots), but it's clear from the pics that you can dump over a cup of water onto it with seemingly no negative effects. So far this doesn't appear to be a technology that the company is commercializing, and frankly it seems like an unnecessary addition to your basic cheap-o plastic keyboard, but we sure wish Logitech et al. would step it up and employ this type of protection in their multi-hundred dollar
diNovo Cordless Desktops-like products.
posted May 17th 2006 3:00PM
Water spilled on a keyboard can just be dried out with a fan. This doesn't help the more serious problem of spilling our favorite sugary caffeinated beverages in between the keys which ruins the keyboard for good.
pour some coke on there...the keyboard will still "work" if you call keys getting stuck working ;)
Waterproof keyboards are a reasonable start, but of more importance is coke/soft drink proof keyboards, it's 'stickyness' more than anything that ruins a keyboard.
http://www.grandtec.com/vik.htm
Josh- not true . .I've just removed the keyboard from the laptop, washed the whole damend thing under the tap, dried it with compressed air, and it works good as new.
i work in a hospital and we have had waterproof keyboards for a while now, they are actually really good with the coke and coffee spills too because they are very shallow and our cleaning crew can actually use cleaning sprays with them
I remember wandering the endless halls at Comdex Fall 94 (that's right almost 12 years ago) and seeing someone demoing a waterproof keyboard in a similar fashion.
So if it's safe to pour water on the keyboard, wouldn't that suggest that if you spilled Coke/Coffee/someting else on it you could just rinse it off with water to clean it off?
I wish someone *cough*Apple*cough* would innovate by making spill proof laptops standard. It wouldn't take much - just a water proof film that stops liquids from touching components and channels it out of the machine through a vent or something... But wait! that would cut off a healthy stream of revenue for laptop makers.
If it's waterproof, does that mean spilling champagne on it won't make the computer come to life and impress the girl next door? (Been trying since the 80's.)
Fat chance J.
Nowadays you have to spill a 40 of malt liquor on it to impress the girl next door. But you will rather shoot yourself then have it seronade her with a Rap midi.
#8, J:
No, Water, specifically distilled water, will not conduct electricity. Impurities in liquid is the real issue. As well as, with soda, the corrosive acid and to a lesser extent the annoying stickiness that can occur.
Lenovo water proof keyboard, thats great. Its really nice to have a keyboard like that.
http://cheap-computers-review.blogspot.com/2006/05/lenovo-3000-j-series-j100-desktop.html
Nice new technology. It will help many people. However, I am just waiting for a virtual keyboard in which I will not need to give pain to my hands and instead will be able to type virtually with laser ray or something.
FINALLY! now i can check out the hun WHILE i'm drinking a rum and coke and not have to worry about an accident.
hmm... my IBM Model M keyboard seems to work just fine. Having taken repeted dosings of water, beer, pepsi, pizza sauce, AND my constant pounding typing, it's gotta be the keyboard for me!
Mine's waterproof too: Microsoft Comfort Curve 2000.
Has anyone tried putting a keyboard in the dishwasher? I did it with a few dirty circuit boards about a decade ago, and they came out just fine.
Am I the only one who started trying to think of some kind of porn-related joke after reading this?
"Protects against more than just water *wink wink*"
I'm with Aaron, is it "bodily fluid proof"?
Um...this has been around for forever. I remember seeing some such device on NewEgg about a year ago for like $15. Is this really news?
Now if they could make my Logitech G15 waterproof, I might be interested...
Now this would be good to be included by default in laptops. Regarding a desktop PC, beside waterproofing I know some of us would need "violenceproofed" keyboard and mouse. You know, for those situations where you are so frustrated with a game that you start hitting the keyboard with the mouse. No, it didn't happen to me.
Gosh...wouldn't it be nice if Lenove put this somewhere where it'd be useful, like their Thinkpads?
Oh wait...they already have it in their thinkpads. Pour a glass of water on your thinkpad and watch the water flow out the ducts on the side. Innovation my ass.
Perfect for when I LOL all over myself while drinking pop.
And I love the extra bonus of being able to use it as a cup. Pour some water in with some Koolaid crystals, and type up a few emails. BAM
why is this news?
http://froogle.google.com/froogle?q=waterproof+keyboard
and there are a couple non-rollup kb's there
yeah i could really use this. about every two months I dump a cup of coffee over on my keyboard. still works though.
sims is talking about the new ThinkPad T60/T60p, which have the spill resistant keyboard and drain holes in the case. I wouldn't try the water test on any other ThinkPad models... :-)
http://www.google.com/search?q=thinkpad+t60+OR+t60p+spill+drain&num=100
Wouldn't you know it, the search I cited says I'm wrong about the spill-resistant keyboard being limited to the T60. According to this CNET review, the T43 has it too:
http://reviews.cnet.com/Lenovo_ThinkPad_T43/4505-3121_7-31312127-2.html
But I don't see it mentioned for the T43 (only the T60) in the famous tabook.pdf:
ftp://ftp.software.ibm.com/pc/pcinstitute/psref/tabook.pdf
Who wants to give their T43 the water test and let us all know what happens?
Give me a kbd that I can put in the dishwasher.