Water and Delicate Electronics are a Bad Mixture

And not in the bad is good kind of way.

I arrived at my afternoon school site to a rather aggravated and worried teacher pal. He explained that he came back to his classroom to find his laptop sitting in a puddle of spilled water.

One of his students had accidentally knocked over a bottle of water near the machine and didn't bother to tell him or try to clean it up. So the laptop sat in the water for a little while.

Needless to say (but I'm saying it anyway), the teacher was deeply peeved and worried that the years of work in his machine were gone. I let him know that, even if the machine was fried, he stood a pretty good chance of recovering his data off the hard drive. Plus, since the liquid was water and not a sticky soda or something, he stood a decent chance of not having even destroyed his machine.

But we won't know for a couple of day as the laptop is now on its side in front of a fan with paper towels underneath it.

What's the lesson? Keep food and liquids as far away from your electronics as possible. Or keep the bottle tops screwed on tight.