A few notebook cleaning questions (Inspiron 1501, ~3 years old)

[I'm a little confused about where to post this, but it looked like manufacturer specific boards have been the place for cleaning questions. Please move if appropriate. Thanks. ]

Alright, I confess. I've had my notebook for over three years now and don't give that much attention to cleaning it and I've never ever given it a deep clean overall. The only thing I really have done much with is the screen– Klear Screen does wonders. Other than that I don't really have any cleaning equipment, not even compressed air.

I did read the notebook cleaning guide from a while back.

So, my questions.

1. How to clean the keyboard.
I'm wondering if I can use a vacuum to suck up some junk. Is that safe? I thought I some some implications somewhere that it's not, maybe an ESD hazard. How about compressed air via an air compressor?

2. Cleaning my main fan.
So I can just stick something in there to keep the fan from spinning and then blow air through?

And that's it for now. I think a couple more questions might come to mind but I've been putting off asking and now here it is.

 

I think you'll need to take apart the notebook if you really want to do a thorough cleaning. Most of the dust accumulating in the cooling system builds up into a fat dust bunny right between the fan and the heatsink. Generally it's not quite possible to remove that clutter with compressed air or a vacuum, as you have the heatsink block one end and the fan blocking the other end.

That being said, I do recall reading that vacuums are unsafe, but I've never read anything about compressors.

In cleaning the fan, you don't really need to keep it spinning, just blast compressed air through it if you don't want to completely dismantle the laptop.

 

An air compressor should be fine if you can turn down the air pressure to that similar of a can of compressed air.

For the keyboard, just pull it off and blow under the keys. Low air pressure should be used here so you don't blow the keys off.

 

Okay. I'm a little confused, though. If I pull the keyboard off there won't be any keys to blow under or off, right? Or am I totally off...?