[xoxoxoBruce]

Originally Posted by glatt

I've read that you can put a keyboard into the dishwasher on the top rack and it can clean them without harming them. I've never tried it though. Sounds totally wrong.

This guy did it.

Three days later, with no evidence of any remaining dampness on the keyboard, I plugged it into an Apple laptop. The Mac OS X keyboard-setup assistant automatically popped up... but then nothing happened. I pressed the "z" key as it instructed, but the computer never registered that input. Much the same thing happened on a Lenovo netbook running Windows XP: The computer realized that there was a keyboard on the other end of that USB cable but didn't detect any keystrokes.

Update: It seems I typed, or tried to type, too soon. Last night, after a day of baking in the same sunny room, the keyboard came to life when I plugged it into each of those two laptops. All of the keys appear to work properly, and the Caps Lock and Num Lock LEDs even illuminate. (Yes, the keyboard did function before; it was just too disgusting for my colleague to want to keep using, and somebody in IT decided it would be simpler to swap it out for a new unit.) So that seems to be the trick--letting the keyboard dry for what seems like enough time, then give it another day or two to air out.