Yup. Just stuck it right in the water, sloshed it around some, and then set it in the sink to dry. No idea if it worked yet, but it was a whole lot more feasible (time wise) than popping every key cap off and cleaning underneath with a swab. Lots of crud definitely came out, though, which is a good sign.
This bizarre behavior on our part was precipitated by an accident involving two kids and a water bottle with a stubborn lid. I’m guessing that the spilled water dissolved some of the roughly four years of accumulated grime, causing it to ooze into various places it didn’t belong. I’d read in numerous places that you could just wash a keyboard in a bucket of water if you let it dry well before you used it, but never tried it. It’s even been reported that you can use a dishwasher without soap and no heat in the drying, but we weren’t quite brave enough to try that.
Most of the reports are pretty adamant that we really need to let this thing dry well, so we’ll probably wait several days before trying it out (it’s pretty humid at the moment). If that works, though, we’ll need to wash the other one as well and maybe the one in my office since they’re pretty darn grotty.
And if that works then I may haul in some of the really grotty keyboards from the Computer Science lab and stick ’em in the dishwasher. Some of them are pretty nasty, but we could get through quite a few of them in one pass through the dishwasher :).
Stay tuned for more on the outcome!
wow. Good luck with that.
This should work fine for ya, I took one apart, cleaned it in the sink, let it dry, and put it back together after a run in with some guinness; everything worked fine.
We test drove the washed keyboard last night as a friend of Sub Evil Boy came over. Everything but the arrow keys appear to work. Perhaps you could clean those individually when you return?
Glad to hear that it worked so well! Popping off 4 arrow keys shouldn’t be a big deal. Hurrah!