Re: Air compressors vs. canned air

[Chris Jones <cjns1989@gmail.com>]

All sound advice and thanks to all for your comments.

Come to think of it, I should have mentioned that I only routinely use
air on the laptop's keyboard, a flimsy model that vaguely tries to
impersonate the real thing, with enough space between the key caps to
let stuff like bread crumbs, hairs, not to mention ambient dust.. etc.
fall between the keys, which in time is likely to form a nice sticky
paste on their underside and end up making some of the keys difficult to
operate.

So, I'm thinking that for this kind of job, provided the ambient air is
not too humid and I give the compressor a few trial burst away from the
keyboard to hopefully get rid of most of the moisture and possible oil
residues, something like a portable car tire inflator combined with a
vac might work for me. 

I have changed that laptop's keyboard 4-5 times already, and since
replacements only cost about $20.00 + S&H.. a cost-effective solution is
to swap in a new keyboard when the current one stops working to my
satisfaction, but at this point I'm concerned the connector might be
reaching the end of its useful life, and that means the next step would
be replacing the motherboard.

As to cleaning the inside of the laptop, that's something I only do when
I have some other reason the open the case, such as when I felt it was
time to change the CPU's thermal pad. Since I rarely have to do anything
that makes it necessary to open the case, even if I feel it's a ripoff,
I don't mind spending a few dollars on a can of air all that much.

Thank you for your comments.

CJ