Imagine that you have worked intensely on you MacBook Air the whole day on several important documents. You have a presentation to deliver to a client the next morning and you are pretty happy with your work and look forward to it.
It’s 7 pm you are about to call it a day when something distracts you and in a split second you inadvertently spill the tea that you’ve been sipping all day long to keep yourself focus on your desk.
A small amount of liquid finds its way onto the keyboard of your laptop too. You quickly find some tissue to wipe off the water to prevent it entering further down into the electronic components and cause some damage.
You haven’t saved the very last update you’ve made but you are happy to get the previous version saved only few minutes ago.
You try to close your application but it’s frozen…oh dear! You start sweating and imagine the worst and decide to make an emergency switch off as the computer no longer respond.
But as you are about to press the power button you hear a frying noise coming from the computer …suddenly the screen goes white and then black.
You try to think quickly of something else to do to save your computer. Quick, you switch the plug off as you know that electricity and water aren’t really best friends.
Sadly this is not a fiction scenario but what has happened to me on Wednesday night. I’ve just finished updating several documents and then blank! It looked pretty grim.
I’ve used my smartphone to search on the net who has experienced the same problem and what I could do to minimise the damages.
I’ve discovered that liquid spillage on laptops is quite common and people offer all kind of tips they have used to save their computers. I particularly stopped on a thread on OSXDaily.com where people shared different tricks to get rid of the water including:
- Flip the laptop over face against a towel
- Use silica gel
- Use alcohol to absorb the water
- Use a hair dryer!
- Wait for 96 hours before switch it on
- Send it for repair by an Apple authorised
Whilst some of the tips are not very traditional, shall we say, some users affirm to have successfully used them.
I went for a less risky but costly option, second best than sending my computer in an Apple store and pay a premium price. I’ve googled for a local Apple authorised repair centre and walked in to get a diagnostic. I will find out this afternoon if it’s reparable and get a final quote…
Well, all this blab just to tell you that the topic I originally prepared for this week is my Mac’s memory. So instead I am sharing this experience and hopefully save someone the pain of going through this.
Five parting piece of advice
#1. Do not keep a cup of tea or coffee or even water close to your laptop unless it’s in a closed container (I know it’s hard! Especially for those who like using their laptops in Starbucks!). Use a keyboard protector
#2. Backup, backup and backup your work. If you use a Seagate external backup drive and use it exclusively to back up the full Mac configuration, save also your main data files on another hard drive that can be both accessed by Mac and PC computers in case you no longer have access to your Mac and have a spare PC at home
#3. Work as much as possible with software on the cloud which means that you don’t have to reinstall all your software and search for expired licences and DVDs
#4. Keep things in perspective. Although a temporary or permanent loss of data might feel like a big deal, it’s not the end of the world. It will certainly cause you some inconvenience but there are more dramatic things than that. Luckily my last full backup was only 10 days old!
#5. Keep calm and carry on.
Did you have any bad luck recently?? What was it and how did you manage to keep sane? I’d love to hear from you. Post your comments below.
Photo credits: Marcolm/freedigitalphotos.net