I received several emails over the past several weeks about cleaning your monitors.  I’m thinking they all referred to the “glass” part so let’s take a look.  You may have even heard that you have to use a special cleaner on your monitor or you could damage the glass.  More about that later.

Cleaning your monitor first requires you to turn off your computer and unplug the monitor from the wall.  Now get a lint-free cloth.  If it is not lint-free it will not hurt your monitor, but it will leave pieces of lint to float around on your monitor.  This means that you will then have to clean the lint off.  Cut out that extra step and go lint-free.

Now as I have said in the past, always check your instruction manual as the next step may not be “authorized”.  They usually recommend using a special cleaning fluid or cloth for cleaning the glass.  I ordered some one time and paid $35 for a special cleaner and cloth.  The cleaner was the regular blue window cleaner that you get at the store (it still had the brand name label on it).  The cloth was lint-free.  What a profit they made on me that time!

My suggestion is to get some regular, non-abrasive, non-ammonia, window cleaner and spray it lightly on your cloth.  Don’t make it dripping wet, and NEVER spray the cleaner directly on your monitor’s screen.  If sprayed directly or too much fluid is on the cloth the cleaner could run down the glass and possibly get into the electronics and you don’t want that to happen.

Next, wipe the cloth on the screen smoothly, gently, and evenly.  When the finger prints and dust on the glass are gone, move on to the next step.

Using the same damp cloth, wipe it over the case, including the little holes that allow heat to vent from your monitor.  Canned air can be used to “blow” out those vents which could aid your monitor in running cooler and longer.  You can put more pressure here as it is just plastic and you can’t hurt it, don’t use an abrasive cleaner anywhere.  After you are done, take a can of compressed air and use it to blow out any leftover dust and lint that you may find.

If you have a newer model flat screen monitor this may not be the way to clean it, so for now follow the manufacturer’s instructions for those.  These may not have a glass screen and it could take special attention and cleaners.

Never remove the monitor’s case!  The inside of a monitor (not flat screen) has a capacitor and has the capacity to shock you possibly to death.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 22nd, 2008 at 5:40 am and is filed under Columns. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.