The Japanese have been kicking our butts technologically for a few decades now. In 1982, the Sony corporation released the very first CD player: the CDP-101. It sold for about $900. Then, 14 years later, the Sony corporation would come out with a new product: the DVD player. The Sony DVP-S7000 was built in Terre-Haute, Indiana, and sold for $970. Well, now it’s 2010, and I am using a DVD player I bought five years ago for $90 at Target. And it is a Sony. I keep it real. And to this day I have never once considered cleaning it. It has performed well. The reason I bought it was so I could watch movies and also listen to music. You see the DVD player played CDs better than the CD player would. If a scratched CD wouldn’t play on the CD player, there was a good chance it would play on the DVD player. Now, in the digital age, this sort of information is rather useless. No one listens to CDs anymore. And, in the not too distant future, no one will watch DVDs either. But until then at least we will be able to clean the DVD players.
Keyboard cleaning is a task I usually put off until newly evolved lifeforms begin emerging from beneath the keys. “It’s my computer,” I reason. “I’m the only person who has to touch it.” But inevitably a friend will come over, ask to use my computer, and barely swallow their vomit in time. Thus, I am forced to clean my keyboard. Perhaps you are in the same boat. No worries. Keyboard cleaning is easy, though it is time consuming. The method I use is cheap and it won’t damage your keyboard or tarnish the key markings. Oh, and your new clean keyboard will be the talk of the blogosphere. The one drawback is, once you decide to clean your keyboard, you won’t be able to use it for a few hours. No computer? No Facebook? No blogging? You may need a heavy sedative or some street drugs to get through this harrowing ordeal. Learn how to score smack and other useful tidbits in my newest article on how to clean a keyboard.
Dust is the main cause of most camera dirt-related issues. There are a few things that you can do at home to get rid of the dust inside your camera. The following steps are simple and safe for your camera. If they are not enough to get rid of the dust, you should have it professionally cleaned. If you use a digital camera, never ever try to directly clean your sensor with anything other than a manual squeeze bulb. Anything else will scratch or possibly even break it. The camera I use in this example is a Canon 5D, a digital SLR. But you should be able to use this advice to clean any type of camera. read the full article How to Clean a Camera.
I grew up in a relatively video game-less universe. The only game we had was Pong which my brother and I played until it broke after only a few months of use. After that I had the occasional opportunity to play the Nintendo at a friends house. But I sucked so I was not a big fan of it. Eventually we got a computer that could handle a few games. I remember playing Duke Nukem, Doom, and Tie Fighter a lot. But it wasn’t until I got to college that I bought my first console. It was a PS2 and I played it quite a bit at first, GTA 3, Rogue Agent and Vice City. But eventually I got bored with it too. It wasn’t until last year that I really got into gaming. My roommate is a born-gamer, he is way better at it than I ever hope to be. Mostly because he has been gaming since the womb, he came out of it with a silver Nintendo controller in his right hand. He bought an Xbox 360 and we started playing, a lot. We would play for entire days. It was awesome. We had tons of games to play, Halo 3, Fable 2, Dynasty Warriors 6 and The Force Unleashed. I should mention that I played Dynasty Warriors 6 just this morning. Neither one of us can get enough of that game. That and GTA 4. Anyway with all this use and with the added bonus of living in a dusty apartment, I thought that our Xbox would be really dirty. But when I cleaned it for the article How to Clean an Xbox 360 I discovered that it was hardly dirty at all. I think it helps that I dust and vacuum on a regular basis. Anyway if you need to clean your Xbox, PS3, Gamecube or Wii, you should check out my article How to Clean an Xbox 360.
I’ve been dropping good cash on CDs for more years than I care to count. Through improper care I had become the proud owner of a pile of scratched CDs that no longer played correctly. That pissed me off to no end. To make it worse, I knew that every scratched CD, due primarily to improper cleaning, was my own fault. The music I listen to is an integral part of my life, it’s also one hell of an investment. I’ve only recently learned how to protect that investment. Like anything else of value that you own, you wanna extend its life for as long as possible. And like those other valuable things in your life, it starts with basic maintenance. If you want to get the most out of your music, start by keeping your CDs clean. It’s easy, and you’ve probably already got everything you need to do it and do it right. And there are a number of ways to clean a CD incorrectly. If you want to avoid ending up with a bunch of music that you’ve rendered unplayable through improper cleaning, check out my article on How to Clean a CD.
When you push the power button on your computer and somehow have time to brush your teeth, make coffee, eat a bagel, solve the energy crisis, design a better mousetrap and create a plan for world peace all before your computer finally starts up, chances are there’s a problem. Hopefully, however, it’s a problem that can be remedied without too much trouble. If this slow start up, as if it wasn’t already bad enough, is accompanied with a few more error messages than you would like to see, I would reckon that you probably need to figure out How to Clean a Registry. Don’t fret. There’s a bundle of registry cleaners that are readily available. There’s even a free registry cleaner or two out there. In this article I not only tell you about a few good registry cleaners, I also let you know a few things you can and should do to protect your computer and your sanity before you even begin cleaning a registry.
When I’m not busy writing how-to articles, I work for a large chain of retail stores that recently replaced its DOS-based cash register system. The new registers have LCD touch-screens, and every time I start a shift at the register, I have to fight my gag reflex, which gets all excited by the greasy fingerprints (and fingersmears and fingersmudges and sometimes fingerchunks) the last person left all over the screen that I’m expected to touch. Our managers have instructed us to clean the screens with window cleaner and paper towels, so I do (I didn’t pay for the registers, after all), but deep down in my heart I know it’s wrong. LCD screens are not glass, and they require different cleaning methods than glass. Fortunately, except for the need to perform a tiny bit of simple chemistry, cleaning an LCD monitor is just as easy as cleaning a glass-screened CRT monitor. My latest article goes over all the steps. Maybe someday, if I’m feeling charitable toward the Man, I’ll forward the link to my employer so they’ll know how to clean an LCD monitor without gradually destroying it.
Eric and I recently splurged on a brand new 32-inch LCD TV after a year of making do with a twenty-year-old hand-me-down 13-inch set with fake wood paneling on the sides. We were, as you can probably imagine, excited. So we got it home, carefully attached it to the stand, transferred it to the top of a bookcase, stood back, and saw…fingerprints. A week later, it was coated with a fine layer of dust and cat hair. It was, without a doubt, time for me to learn how to clean an LCD TV. Safely, you know, so as not to ruin this thing we spent several hundred dollars on. Turns out, cleaning an LCD TV is not as difficult or expensive as you might expect. All the details are in my new article.
