TOUCH TABLET and CELL PHONE

Water is a tricky thing with computers. Sometimes it can cause a lot of damage, while other times, it can clean up the equipment quite nicely. It all depends on how sensitive the electronics are and how much they're meant to be "beaten upon."

Keyboards are made to put up with the constant impact of typing, day in and day out, for years. They're very rugged components of your system and can take quite the pounding. Because of the sturdiness of most keyboards, water has little effect on them in the long term.

In the short term, as you noticed, water can cause the keyboard to stop working. But as soon as the water dries from all the internal electronics of the keyboard, things should work again just fine without problems. You can speed up the drying process by using an everyday hair dryer. Place the hair dryer about six inches above the keyboard and slowly move it back and forth for about 10 minutes. Presto, change-o, all the water will be gone and your keyboard will work!

What if it wasn't water?
I should note here that this only applies to water. If you spill something that has sugar in it, like soda, you run the risk of damaging your keyboard permanently.

To fix a spill that's not just water, you actually want to soak the entire keyboard in tap water for a good 20 minutes. Don't use soap or anything special; that'll just exacerbate the problem. Once the keyboard has soaked a bit, turn it upside down and shake out all the water you can. Then take the hair dryer to it. Let it sit for a few days, and it should work just fine.

Another important thing is that this only applies to desktop keyboards. If you spill water on your laptop keyboard, the water might have seeped through into other computer components stored below the keyboard. In that case, the best thing you can do is let it dry, give it a test, and if anything seems wrong, take it into a repair shop. They should be able to fix it right up.