With so many of us taking laptops into the kitchen, this question from Nina is a particularly good one!
I'm writing this to you after spending a half an hour getting a piece of lemon zest from under the L key on my laptop. Yes -- I took the laptop into the kitchen again!! This has become a regular and unwelcome experience in my life, but it is really not going anywhere. Although I have a healthy collection of cookbooks, 99% of the recipes I cook I find online. I refuse to print these out, which means that my little Mac is my loyal cooking companion.
Unfortunately, between the melted butter facials on the screen and salt scrubs on the mouse bad, the Mac is not enjoying the experience. I've gone as far as wrapping plastic wrap around the keyboard, but I was hoping you and the readers have some better tips. I've seen some features on innovating technology for the kitchen, but I have yet to see these techie solutions out and as a viable option. Any suggestions, from low to high tech, would be greatly appreciated!!
You're definitely not alone, Nina! All of us who tote our laptops into the kitchen have at one point or another found ourselves dabbing batter from the screen or trying to round up crumbs from underneath the keys.
So far, we've kept our laptop from grave harm by keeping it away from the main cooking area on a separate shelf. When we need it closer, our low-tech solution has been like yours - wrap that laptop up in plastic wrap! It's not pretty, but it beats the tedious cleanup.
Another basic solution might be sealing the laptop inside a large resealable plastic bag. Ziploc makes some pretty big, heavy-duty, clear plastic bags that we think could fit over the laptop like a sleeve. A large rubber band or a bit of clever taping could keep the plastic tight against the screen and keyboard.
• Large Ziploc Bags, around $7 per box from Amazon.
On the high-tech side, we've found a few possibilities online. A combination of keyboard protector plus screen protector would be good insurance against all but the worst kitchen spills:
• iSkin ProTouch Artic Keyboard Protector, $14.99 on Amazon
• Laptop Covers and Skin, $16.95 from ProtectCovers.com - These look like they protect the touchpad area as well as the keyboard itself
• Kensington Cling2 Laptop Protector, $19.25 from Amazon.
For those of us who are regularly including laptops in our mise en place, it's definitely worth investing in some computer cleaning products. Compressed air is available at any office supply store and is great for blasting crumbs from keyboards. You should also be able to find both wet and dry wipes intended specifically for computer screens.
There is also a product called Cyber Clean, which looks like silly putty and can be used to clean nooks that can be otherwise hard to reach. We reviewed it over on Unplggd, our site that reviews new technology, and it's available online from Firebox.com.
We were really hoping to find some sort of Mission-Impossible-approved, I-really-need-to-check-email-on-this-sandy-beach-in-the-rain, scuba-skin type of device, but apparently nothing like that is available to the general public quite yet. Hopefully, the products we mentioned above will tide us over in the meantime.
Any other laptop protecting suggestions for Nina?
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Please do not wrap your laptop with plastic wrap or place it in a plastic bag. Your laptop need to be able to vent out hot air. Although it is important to keep your keyboard and screen clean, there are also other reasons why laptops don't belong in the kitchen. All the steam and essential oils from cooking in the kitchen gets on and into the computer. Not to mention accidently splattering your laptop with water or hot oil. Sorry I really don't have a solution for this but just wanted to let you know why its not just the lemon zest getting under the keyboard that is problematic.
Thinking back to the day when it was popular to mount a monitor under your desk so that you looked at it through a piece of glass (anyone else remember seeing this?)...
I've always wished I had a large enough kitchen to give up a drawer and cabinet and mount some type of small computer/terminal under a counter-level piece of glass. With enough forethought, you might be able to have the glass only evident when the monitor is on.
Another option would be some type of pull-down device from under the kitchen cabinets. I think I've seen them for cookbooks. It would keep the laptop a bit more out of the way.
(Can you tell I've thought about this a little too much over the years?) :) Definitely agree with Luxeport that any type of long-term solution would have to allow for ventilation and protection from flying debris.
@Luxeport, if you don't cover the vents (and trust me, you'd notice if you did) you'd be fine covering the thing in plastic wrap. The plastic bag, though, I have to agree with you on. However, I'm significantly more worried about shorting the thing out from typing with wet hands than having it overheat in the kitchen.
I'd probably stick with plastic wrap over the keyboard and ignore the splatters on the screen. I doubt any of the stuff you're getting on the screen will eat it, so just wipe it down with vinegar or window cleaner afterwords. Might I also suggest an apron to wipe your hands on so you can avoid salt scrubbing the track pad? Or you could get a cheapo mouse for use in the kitchen.
Hmm...I forgot about the whole need computers have to vent hot air when I suggested the ziploc bags. (and I thought I was so clever!) What if you cut vent holes in the plastic bag? Or maybe that's starting to get a little too zany...
The iSkin is really good - I use on on my main computer (where I generally eat breakfast and lunch) and it's saved me from lots of crumbs and spills, so it would definitely work in the kitchen (unless you did something majorly bad).
I hung mine on the wall.
When a friend was moving overseas, I bought her old iMac. I have a long, narrow kitchen, so I mounted it (using a standard monitor/small flat-screen-TV mount) on one of the short walls. The keyboard and mouse are wireless - I use them on the counter to open my recipe database or open a recipe in the browser, then I sit them out of the way. I bump the font size up in the browser, or use full-screen mode on my recipe database, and I can easily read the screen from anywhere.
It's on the other side of the kitchen from the stove and sink, so I don't have to worry about grease. And I always find other things to do with it - check weather on the way out the door, display digital pictures as a screensaver, or talk to a friend on Skype while I bake cookies.
Love that drawer with a glass topped counter idea - hopefully kitchen designers are reading!
Thank you for all the ideas! I think I'm going to go the iSkin route at least for now, but I will be dreaming of a kitchen with a computer drawer under a glass counter top. I really think that is a brilliant idea. Another suggestion I got from my significant other was hooking the computer up to the tv (which I luckily can see from the kitchen). The tv size magnifies the recipe large enough to where I can easily see. It doesn't solve the need to touch the keyboard and mouse, but that is not as much of an issue and can sometimes be remedied with a wireless mouse...
Heh, might not be the route for everyone, but if you're prepared to throw down a bunch of cash for plastic laptop sleeves and such, you might just look into getting a cheap used/refurb netbook so you can spare your pretty (and far more expensive) Mac from any kitchen abuse.
My boyfriend just bought a (albeit super slow and tiny-screened) first-generation Asus eeePC netbook for $40 for the sole purpose of making it a kitchen computer. It's incredibly sturdy (as we've already managed to drop it a few times-- short distances!) and the small screen actually makes it less likely for splatters to hit it ;-)
All of this talk of plastic covering the computer makes me nervous! Also, Luxeport is absolutely right - all of the nastiness in the air in your kitchen will eventually clog up the fans / heat sinks / vents on your laptop and it is not very easy to clean on a Mac. (I work in technology - can you tell?)
There is an app called Sous Chef that works with an Apple Remote and has a "ten foot mode" with high contrast screen so that you can read it easily from far away and control it with the remote instead: http://acaciatreesoftware.com/
They also make keyboards that are waterproof and flexible - if you absolutely must take your laptop into the kitchen, try peripherals (mouse/keyboard) that allow you to avoid touching the laptop itself as much as possible.