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How to Clean Your Laptop

nytimes.com

11–20 of 63 posts

Re: How to Clean Your Laptop

#11

Also clean your smartphone. It builds up more bacteria than a petri dish laborant could hope for.

Do you have a citation for this? Because it surprises me. Most smartphones are hard, dry surfaces, which inhibits bacteria growth.

All you have to do is tilt your touchscreen to see all the fingerprints smeared across the glass, to notice the microfilm of built up skin oils that provide an environment for microbial growth.

Re: How to Clean Your Laptop

#12

Also clean your smartphone. It builds up more bacteria than a petri dish laborant could hope for.

Do you have a citation for this? Because it surprises me. Most smartphones are hard, dry surfaces, which inhibits bacteria growth.

You hold it in your hand, pressed against your ear, while speaking into it with your mouth. It has bacteria on it. I wouldn't be too worried. Is isn't any dirtier than your hands or your ears already are, but I wouldn't be a good idea to share a phone with a flu sufferer.

Re: How to Clean Your Laptop

#13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have a citation for this? Because it surprises me. Most smartphones are hard, dry surfaces, which inhibits bacteria growth.

I'm not a scientist, but this paper found "high level bacterial contamination" of cell phones: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5466825/ Anecdotally, we were recently in the NICU of a children's hospital and they required washing our hands and cleaning our cell phones before entering. It doesn't seem too far-fetched that they would have a reason for doing so.

Does the article address why cell phones wouldn't be an extension of the skin flora[1], in terms of normally having good bacteria? Or is there something about cell phones that kills off good bacteria, but not bad?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skin_flora (there are 1000 species of bacteria from 19 phyla normally inhabiting healthy skin)

Re: How to Clean Your Laptop

#14
Don't eat while using your laptop and you will keep it clean with a dust cloth and a mist of water. Eat while using your laptop and no vacuum in the world will be able to suck that disgusting filth from it.

Re: How to Clean Your Laptop

#15

Also clean your smartphone. It builds up more bacteria than a petri dish laborant could hope for.

Do you have a citation for this? Because it surprises me. Most smartphones are hard, dry surfaces, which inhibits bacteria growth.

Quick and dirty (pun intended) translation of the most important points of a recent newsitem on a Belgian Dutch tv channel (https://nieuws.vtm.be/vtm-nieuws/binnenland/video-zo-vuil-je...)

According to a KUL researcher, between 20 to 100 species of bacteria are living on any smartphone (she analysed 5 phones). Almost all species are skin bacteria, but a strand of stafylococcus aureus could cause problems such as sepsis, and wound infections.

Undoutedly, you have read ample smartphone reviews with complaints of smears being too visible on the casings or screens.

Re: How to Clean Your Laptop

#16

Also clean your smartphone. It builds up more bacteria than a petri dish laborant could hope for.

Do you have a citation for this? Because it surprises me. Most smartphones are hard, dry surfaces, which inhibits bacteria growth.

See https://nerdist.com/what-it-looks-like-when-students-press-t...

Re: How to Clean Your Laptop

#17
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not a scientist, but this paper found "high level bacterial contamination" of cell phones: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5466825/ Anecdotally, we were recently in the NICU of a children's hospital and they required washing our hands and cleaning our cell phones before entering. It doesn't seem too far-fetched that they would have a reason for doing so.

Does the article address why cell phones wouldn't be an extension of the skin flora[1], in terms of normally having good bacteria? Or is there something about cell phones that kills off good bacteria, but not bad? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skin_flora (there are 1000 species of bacteria from 19 phyla normally inhabiting healthy skin)

People wash their hands. People don't usually wash their phone.

Re: How to Clean Your Laptop

#18

Also clean your smartphone. It builds up more bacteria than a petri dish laborant could hope for.

Or don’t, and keep your immune system on its toes. Over-cleanliness is known to be problematic, and it’s why we have kids who can be taken out with a peanut. If dirt in a a particular regime is positively linked to illness (i.e. cross contamination of raw meats during food prep) then take measures. On the other hand the mere fact that something is dirty or bacteria-laden is not a reason to run for antiseptic wipes.

The whole world is teeming with bacteria, most of it is harmless.

Re: How to Clean Your Laptop

#19
Keeping your tools clean is good hygiene. Additionally, whenever I start working at a new place I always clean the keyboard. It's amazing how disgusting they can get. For old keyboards, if you pop off the keys, you'll find they're typically full of hair, food, and other random debris. People usually think I'm a weirdo when they see me doing it, but my boss at my previous project saw how gross my keyboard was when the keys were off, and went out and got me a new keyboard (in this case it was a desktop keyboard instead of a laptop).

Re: How to Clean Your Laptop

#20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have a citation for this? Because it surprises me. Most smartphones are hard, dry surfaces, which inhibits bacteria growth.

I'm not a scientist, but this paper found "high level bacterial contamination" of cell phones: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5466825/ Anecdotally, we were recently in the NICU of a children's hospital and they required washing our hands and cleaning our cell phones before entering. It doesn't seem too far-fetched that they would have a reason for doing so.

David Mitchell, a British comedian, has a great comment on this. Given that all smartphone users are not dead, it just goes to show how meaningless studies like that are.

Being around people with compromised immune systems requires different standards, but day to day, it doesn't seem to matter.

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