Here are 5 tips to make your laptop keyboard cleaning adventures go a little easier.

1. Place a polish cloth over the keyboard whenever closing the lid.

This is a preventative maintenance measure. Polish cloths don’t scratch screens, and when placed over the keyboard before you close the lid, little to no dirt or whatever else is flying in air won’t get into the keyboard while you’re away from it (dirt can enter from the sides even with the lid closed). Granted, it isn’t the most stylish thing seeing a polish cloth draping out over the sides, but it does keep things cleaner.

Important note: You must lay the polish cloth absolutely flat when you close the lid. If you do the fold-over thing, this can cause undue pressure on the screen and damage it.

2. Remove the keyboard before blasting it with compressed air.

Yes, I know, removing a laptop keyboard is scary. The two hardest parts are are getting the tiny latches/clips to release, and then carefully disconnecting the tiny ribbon connector (or possibly two of them) from under the keyboard so you can safely remove the board. Once the keyboard is out however, cleaning it is very easy because you can actually get your compressed air where it’s supposed to go and get the crud *out* rather than blast it further under the keys.

If you’re too afraid to remove your keyboard (and I wouldn’t blame you), try tip #3 below instead.

3. Blast the keyboard with compressed air with the laptop upside down.

You can do this the sort-of-good-way or the good way.

The sort-of-good way is to take your laptop, open it so it makes a “V” shape and place on your desk upside-down-V style. When you start blasting your keyboard with compressed air, most dust particles and other debris will fall out and on to the desk instead of being pushed further inside the laptop.

The good way, while a bit of a production, does work better. Take two stacks of books (or old software boxes or whatever you have that’s book-like; old phone books work really good here) that equal the same or roughly the same height when stacked on the desk. The height of the stacks should be 8 to 12 inches. Spread the stacks apart so the total space between them is 1 to 2 inches less than your laptop’s overall width. Open the laptop and place it keyboard-down on top of the stacks, with the lid in the rear. Then start blasting air to clean your keyboard as you normally would. Dust and other debris has no choice but to fall down.

Important note 1: Watch your angle when you do this. If you notice your compressed air is liquifying because of the angle of your spray, stop and adjust because you don’t want to shoot condensation into your laptop keyboard.

Important note 2: Obviously, have the laptop unlplugged and battery out when you clean like this.

Important note 3: It is very likely that if you haven’t cleaned the keyboard in a while (if ever), dust and other crud that falls out may get carried by your compressed air and mash itself on the screen. You’ll probably have to do a screen cleaning once you’re done with your keyboard cleaning.

4. Do not use solvents that would otherwise “eat away” the lettering on your laptop keyboard keys.

This one is easy.

First, don’t use any cleaner with ammonia in it. Many glass cleaners contain it, so avoid that.

Second, for the solvent you use, you only need a tiny amount for keyboard keys. It’s probably true you’re going to use cotton swabs to clean the keys with. Grab an 8 oz. glass, fill with water, add 1 tablespoon glass cleaner with no ammonia, mix. This sounds like a recipe but this really does work. Dip the cotton swabs you use to clean with in the mix, squeeze the tip to get rid of excess water out of the tip (this prevents water from running off a key and into the board), then clean as you normally would. Remember, all you need is “just enough” solvent for keyboard keys. Anything more will cause your keyboard lettering to be eaten away prematurely.

5. If you have blanks for your open ports, use them.

This is another preventative maintenance measure, and an easy one.

Most new laptops will come with one or more plastic blanks (such as the one for your card reader slot). What most people do is take the blank and discard it. Well, you shouldn’t do that because it leaves a rather large opening for dust and debris to get inside that can even make its way to collecting under your keyboard keys.

“I’ll just leave my flash memory card in the laptop all the time then!”

You can do that, but that might present a heat problem. My suggestion here is to go ahead and plug the card in, and if you notice any noticeable heat after the card has been in there for a while, consider using the blank instead.

If you lost your blank, you’re better off just leaving the port open even if it does prove to be a dust collector. And no, do not spray compressed air in there. Just check the port every so often, and if you notice some dust build-up (which will happen), wipe as much as you can get to with a dry polish cloth. Don’t stick a cotton swab in there because the cotton fibers can get caught on the connectors and actually get burnt (you insert a card, the connectors touch with the cotton fibers sandwiched between and burn up from heat). Cotton fibers in there won’t cause a fire, but it can eventually render your card slot unsuable if enough fibers get burnt in there.

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5 Laptop Keyboard Cleaning Tips

1. Make Sure the Problem is with the Hard Drive: Can you still start your computer up in safe mode? One surefire way to determine whether or not a drive’s bad is to utilize a piece of drive testing software, such as Seagate Seatools.

2. Check to see that it’s connected: This is only for those of you who know your way around the inside of a computer. Occasionally, a hard drive might become disconnected from the motherboard (or the connectors might get a bit loose).

3. Listen: Does the Hard Drive make strange sounds while it’s running? Is it skipping and cracking audibly, or making noises other than what it should be(humming and occasional crackling as it accesses files and information).  That’s a sure sign something’s messed up inside.

4. Bring it In: Unless you’re equipped to do hard drive repair and data recovery out of your own basement, you’d probably be best served bringing it in to a registered technician in order to get it repaired. After all, if there’s a problem, you don’t want to make it any worse than it already is- and if there’s a chance of fixing things, you don’t want to mess up that chance (though generally once a hard drive fails, there’s little to do except damage control.)

5. Data Recovery: If there’s a bunch of absolutely vital data on your drive and you absolutely can’t abide with losing it, there may be a small chance that someone could recover that data (depending on how badly damaged the hard drive is and whether or not that data is on a damaged sector.) Be warned, though- unless you’ve absolutely irreplaceable data, you’re better off cutting your losses- recovery ain’t cheap, after all.

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What To Do if Your Hard Drive Fails

Defraggler on the other hand works great, is free and is a good solid replacement for the wonky Windows Disk Defragmenter. There are some things you can do to speed up the defrag times so you spend less time defragging and more time computing. Check out the video below to see how it’s done.

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Tips On How To Make Defraggler Faster

On the mobile side of things, even the simplest featurephone has a “memo” feature that can be used for very basic task management. On advanced smartphones, I don’t know of any that doesn’t have a task management app, and you also have the option of third party apps.

On the PC side of things, there is of course Microsoft Outlook, but there’s also Lightning for Mozilla Thunderbird that has a task management feature. And then there’s the plethora of web-based task managers. With webmail, Hotmail has a to-do feature (Calendar > New > To-do) as does AOL Mail (sidebar app) as does Gmail with Google Tasks. With third party web sites (some of which have apps of their own) there’s Remember The Milk, Simplenote, Toodledo and many others.

But what about a workstation-style task manager? Does one exist that’s free, ultra-powerful, ultra-fast and meant to be used on the workstation?

Yes, and it’s called ToDoList.

ToDoList, simply put, is incredible. Everything you ever wanted in a workstation-style task manager is here. The first thing you’ll notice is that sub-tasks are stupidly easy to create (and why other task managers don’t have this feature by default I’ll never know). Setting priority of tasks couldn’t be simpler, and yes they are color-coded.

Can you time-track with this thing? Yes, you can. Can you multi-sort tasks as if you were working in an Excel spreadsheet? Again, yes you can. What else can you do with it? Just look at the columns you have available to get an idea:

It’s unlikely you’ll ever need all the features offered by ToDoList, but it’s nice that a true workstation-style task manager exists that does not require any internet connectivity whatsoever. ToDoList can be run completely as a standalone app, and is small enough to run off a USB stick easily.

Want a quick calendar? ToDoList does that:

Want to encrypt the task list or maybe use FTP sync? ToDoList does that:

I also seriously like the fact that this was programmed not to get in your way. How do you minimize ToDoList quickly? Esc key. That’s it. Can ToDoList be sent down as a taskbar icon? Yes. Can you set up a hotkey combination of your choosing to bring it back? Yes. Yes, yes and more yes with ToDoList.

ToDoList does everything a workstation task manager should do, and does it all right.

Link: ToDoList 

(Note: The download is labeled as ‘Executable and all plugins’ and is nothing but a ZIP file. Extract to a folder or your USB stick and just run the executable ToDoList to start the program. Make sure to use the sample tutorial tasks to get yourself familiarized.)

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ToDoList May Be Best Workstation-Style Task Organizer

Most of these are on the latter side.

The Trashbin Computer(Alexey Christov)

I have a wire-mesh wastepaper basket in my bathroom upstairs that looks identical to this PC. Granted, it’s a pretty cool model, and all…but it still looks more like something you’d throw your trash in than an actual computer. Still, it’s an innovative- if not rather odd- idea, and won first place in a 2004 case mod competition.

The Casket Case

So, uh…this isn’t exactly an economical case design. I mean, it’s awesome and all, but…in order to actually make use of it, you’d need to find table space for a full-sized funeral casket. The monitor is mounted on the cap panel, and just below, there’s a slide-out drawer with the mouse and keyboard. If you’re feeling particularly morbid, I suppose you could technically sleep in it, as well.

Clogged Pipes(Envador)

At some point, there was a fellow with the handle “Envador.” This fellow decided one day, on seeing a children’s training toilet at Wal Mart that it’d make the perfect case for his computer. No, I don’t really know what was running through his head, either. Points for originality- in particular, the biohazard logo and toiler flusher power-switch are both nice touches, even if the specs are downright abysmal by today’s standards.

Extra Cool(Peter Edge)

One of the biggest problems with a lot of higher-end rigs is that they tend to run very,very hot. Peter Edge came up with a very unique solution for this concern- a case made entirely of (working) fans. Awesome? Yes. Absurd? Definitely? Impractical? Yeah, more than a touch.

Special Delivery(???)

Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to find out much about this entry on the list- All I saw was the image gallery, pictured here.  Someone took the time to build a PC inside a blue packing crate, then cover it with what I assume is supposed to look like rotting fruit (to me, it looks like a pumpkin that spent a touch too long in the sun). No word on the specs, or even if it properly functions- though I can only assume it does, since, from what I can tell, it seems to have most of the working parts.

Honorable Mention: The Habi-Case

Image Credits: [Flickr,Imagebit, Envador, Bored Bored, Humor Sharing]

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Five of the Most Bizarre PC Mods Ever Devised

Verizon CFO Fran Shammo – now hated by many VZW customers big time – explained that “you will have to go on to the data share plan” and basically have no choice in the matter.

Why is Big Telco dumping all the unlimited plans?

This is a classic case of overselling the service and not having the infrastructure to back it up. Big Telco has been notorious for doing thing ever since mobile phones became popular, and it’s not going to stop any time soon.

Well, not until long-range Wi-Fi becomes a real thing and everyone dumps Big Telco for Skype or Google Voice.

Via The Consumerist

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No More ‘Grandfathered’ Unlimited Verizon Data Plans

Certain laptop manufacturers do actually include a 2-channel (meaning stereo) port MIC port next to the output port; this allows you to plug in things like iPods and other audio devices over a traditional 3.5mm stereo connector rather than use the USB port.

Do you have a MIC port than can also serve as LINE IN? Check out the video below and you’ll see how to find out if you do or not.

Post from: PCMech. Helping Normal People Get Their Geek On And Live The Digital Lifestyle.

How To “Convert” A Laptop Microphone Port To Line In

The Razer Tiamat($179.99):  Those of you who know Razer shouldn’t be all that surprised that they’ve an entry on this list. They are, after all, one of the top businesses on the market when it comes to developing gaming accessories and peripherals. Not only is it (comparatively) cheaper than several other entries no the list, it’s also capable of  near-perfect sound, and looks mighty fine, to boot. Plus, it’s Razer- so that brings it a little higher in the books of most folks, right away.

Turtle Beach Ear Force($112.78): The Turtle Beach headset features four speakers in each ear cup and dual subwoofers- the end result is that you end up with full surround-sound being pumped directly into your ears. Pretty sweet, no? It looks pretty spiffy, to boot. Oh, did I mention that it’s also 360 compatible, as well?

The Astro A40($249.99): You’re going to need to kick your wallet in the teeth and shell out a bit of cash to afford this one-but it’ll be worth it. Right out the door, this one’s got a pretty hefty endorsement behind it as the official headset of MLG. Chances are good that if the pros are happily using it, it’s probably a pretty decent product, no? It’s got many of the features that you’ll see in several of the others on the list, with headphones that essentially cancel out all noise in the area, and looks right sexy, too.

The LogitechG39($119.99): What sets the G390 apart from the other entries on this list is that it’s fully wireless- no cords to get tangled or run over by your office chair. It delivers the same level of sound quality as all the other headsets hear, features a noise-cancelling boom mic, and can be customized with touch and voice commands, using several programmable keys. Not a bad deal for 120 bucks, no?

Sennheiser PC36($249.95): Here’s another that carries a hefty price tag, with good reason. Sennheiser’s beautiful headset features noise cancellation, a microphone that cuts itself off when the boom is raised, full surround sound and Hi-Fi sound. Couple that with a visually pleasing design and comfortable ear cups, and you’ve got a winner.

Naturally, these are only a few suggestions to get you on the right track. Shop around! Find the microphone that you think will fit you the best- just be sure you read the reviews, first.

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The Five Best Gaming Headsets

Now in case you weren’t aware, Facebook is going public as a company, as in a publicly-traded company, this week. Many are saying "too little, too late" here and that having Facebook going public is a disaster in the making for two reasons. First, Facebook ultimately has nothing that would continue to keep people using the site (if your friends left Facebook, would you have any real reason to stay there?), and second is the waning userbase. As everyone knows, there is a distinct difference between total number of users and total number of active users. I don’t have to ask you if you’ve noticed your friend activity on Facebook is decreasing, because you already know it is.

I am in the 50% who does believe Facebook is a passing fad – but with a condition. As for Facebook itself, yes, it’s a fad. As for social networking, that’s not a fad.

We as humans like to connect, communicate and share stuff with other humans. That’s what we do, that’s what we’ve always done and no matter how you look at it, social media really ramped up our internet communications with each other and made it easier.

I do believe social media is here to stay, but as for Facebook, that’s a train wreck in progress and they should have went public a year earlier.

No, I’m not saying Facebook is dead, but it’s definitely past peak (at least in the US).

Via Yahoo! News

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Is Facebook A Passing Fad?

BrightHouse Networks in Florida for example does use the Time Warner Roadrunner internet service. In the Tampa Bay area, email addresses to customers (for those that elect to use them) are assigned as username@tampabay.rr.com. The rr.com portion means RoadRunner. For other areas like Michigan that also has RoadRunner service, they have similarly assigned email addresses that contain their locale. I’m sure the rr.com email addresses will stay, but does this mean new email addresses after the branding change will be something else? Nobody knows.

As for pricing changes, it depends which ISP you use and where. Either you’ll pay a little more (and by little I mean a change of $5 or less) or your monthly subscriber fee will remain the same. If you are a RoadRunner user, you may want to ring them up and ask if any pricing changes are coming soon.

Via DSLReports

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RoadRunner Internet Service Branding Going Away