The WOW! Buzz

Several years ago, I bought my wife a MacBook Pro for her personal use.  After “sharing” computers with me and the heavy college/HS student population of our household at that point, it was time for her own machine–one that someone had to ask her permission to use instead of the other way around.  Probably several years too late, but that’s another discussion…

About two months after the purchase, I came home from work to find the computer open and sitting up on the kitchen table on its end, as though it were a book on display atop a library shelf.  An odd position.  Scratched my head a bit, but didn’t worry too much about it until she returned from her errands and walked through the door.  I could tell from her face that something wasn’t right.  It had been a no good, very bad day…

She tearfully told me that in the process of her work that morning, she had spilled a glass of water at the table, some of which had splashed onto the keyboard of the MacBook.  She was unsure how much, but it was enough to freeze the machine and make the screen go dark.  She had disconnected the power supply, shook what she could out of the Mac, and left it on its end to “drain and dry”.  Since it had been several hours, we ventured to try and restart the machine.  Nope…it was now a very expensive brushed aluminum brick.

I called Apple and told them the situation, complete with the disclosure on the potential water entry.  They suggested I send it back to them in a prepaid box they would send me, and told me that if the repair was determined to be water damage, they would let me know the charges before repairs were made.  I steeled myself for that phone call.  Instead of hearing from them, precisely two days after we had sent the machine to Apple, it was back on our doorstep fully repaired and functional.  Apple had replaced the logic board at no charge to the Stanfill family.  Parenthetically, Apple has always received more than its share of my discretionary income precisely because of its more-than-helpful attitude towards me as a customer.

The outcome could have been much different.  Apple had no legal obligation under the terms of its warranty to fix the computer at no charge.  Many of us have had experiences with water and electronic devices which did not end nearly so well.

Here’s the thing…Water is a conductor of electricity (pure water is a very poor conductor, but in today’s world, most water contains ions of sodium or other elements that make it much more conductive than it is naturally), and putting water in contact with electronic circuitry will cause carefully engineered circuit paths to be redirected to places they should not go.  Even worse are other water based drinks that have intentional “impurities” introduced to the mix–coffee, tea, soft drinks, etc.  These drinks are highly conductive and even worse, leave a residue on electronic parts that can remain conductive even after the moisture is gone.

At the risk of displaying a Profound Mastery of the Obvious (PMO), here are a couple of rules to keep your gear running well:

1)  Don’t eat or drink in close proximity to your computer or other electronic gear.  Do not think that “it will never happen to me”.

2)  Don’t use your set top box or DVR as a support for a houseplant. Duh.

3)  When moving digital cameras, computers, ipods, etc. from a cool dry environment to a warm humid environment, allow them to remain in their case until temperature is normalized within.  Condensation from moisture in the air is as bad as dumping water inside the device.  Jumping outside with your digital camera from an air conditioned space into an Evansville summer day is not a good idea.

and, finally with tongue squarely in cheek,

4)  Don’t allow pets to “nest” on electronic gear.  A couple of years ago, a customer came in for a set top box replacement.  No problem.  Two weeks later she was in again.  The WOW! service rep quizzically asked if there was any reason she knew of why the set top boxes would be failing, whereupon the customer responded that her cat had a habit of peeing into the top (vented portion) of the box.  Apparently didn’t like the programming.  True story.

Until next time….