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Fun with Data
My users are pretty bad, but none of them have leaked banana goo into their hard drives. Worst I can recall is when one of my more particularly clueless users dumped a cup of coffee into her laptop while flying to some hyper-critical meeting*. It was the first time I'd ever gotten a phone call from an airplane. Weirdly, the laptop survived, perhaps because of good design and the fact that I told her to turn it off and remove the battery until it dried out**.
They really don't make them like they used to, I tell ya.
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* Which, around here anyway, is equivalent to "any meeting".
** Without electricity, a computer is just a lump of plastic and metal. As long as there's no current present, you could put it in a bucket of water and, assuming it was allowed to completely dry out, it would be fine the next time you turned it on†.
† Which is not to say you should do this with a laptop. There may be a tiny battery lurking in there for the clock, or the LCD screen may implode for its own reason. But if you know some electronics might get wet, it's better to take the batteries out‡.
Isn't there also a danger of corrosion? And as for other liquids, that they might leave a residue that conducts electricity even without water?
Posted by: ron on November 16, 2006 03:09 PMYup, corrosion, as well as contamination, would also be a real problem, especially if this was some natural water source like a river or the ocean. Which is why you should never try it at home :).
Posted by: scott on November 16, 2006 03:13 PMSo what I'll do is take Amber's shiny new laptop and dunk it in some de-ionized water, let it dry, and then see what happens. If it doesn't work out, I'll let her unleash her fury on you.
this oughta be fun!
Posted by: ron on November 16, 2006 03:57 PMI'd think her rage would be unleashed on the target closest at hand. Just make sure that isn't you.
Anyhow, electronics these days are damned sensitive. It's the price you pay when you pack more and more electronics into smaller and smaller packages. Back in the day, when our Vic=20s used 0 gague leads from the CPU and printed circuit boards with traces the width of your thumbnail, you could keep the damn things immersed in tap water for a year, pull them out, dry them off, and all four kilobytes of their memory would be perfectly fine.
Nowadays, the traces on the motherboards are so thin you almost need a microscope to see them, and most of the chip leads on modern SDRAM modules have to be vac uum sealed and gold plated because the moisture in the air would corrode them away in seconds. But I've already forgotten how I managed to survive without 10 GB of MP3s on random walk rotation while I tear across Azeroth on a flaming stallion while night elf babes wear bunny ears and dance for my amusement.
Posted by: Tatterdemalian on November 17, 2006 12:17 AMLEERRROOOOOOYYY JJJEEEENNNNKKKIINNNSSSS!!!!!!
Posted by: ron on November 17, 2006 12:55 PM