Ants!

A little off - topic, am not sure if anyone has experienced this issue before.

Of late, I've been noticing ants in my laptop - am a stickler for cleanliness and have a strict no food/drink policy near my laptop. I've had to open up the laptop and do a thorough cleaning every couple of weeks.

any idea why this is happening, and how you've dealt with it?

 

this is probably has something to do with where you are living, the ants are probably attracted to certain scents that is given off by laptops.

There is not much you can do, other than to spray things like Mortein around where you are using the laptop.

 

Are you sure it's not just a bug?

 

Coincidence that you brought this up (and the fact that I read this) because I was talking about this recently. My previous machine - an Acer 5920 - I had noticed this - ants walking around the keyboard. Like you I take good care of my machines. Anyways, I found this infestation of ants quite irritating but did nothing about it. After sometime they disappeared. But then again, after a few months, inexplicably, the Acer died. I wonder what role these idiot ants had to play in the dying of the machine.

Luckily, I have not had this experience with my current machine. So, all in all, I can tell you only this: Be very careful and periodically do what you are already doing - opening up the machine and cleaning it.

Good luck!

 

I've used to lie with notebook on the mattress under tree in summer. Never noticed any problems with ants - they are just walking around, but I highly doubt they can be a reason of fried motherboard.

 

Ants cooked on the laptop grill with a bit of tabasco Yummy! haha

A good while back I had a problem with wasps. They have found a long hole in my pc speaker which is housing the screw connection. They have made "wasp nest" in there, and put some larvas in there. I didn't realize it after few weeks.

The true is that insects are everywhere...

 

Some ants are attracted to electronics. Once inside they can chew through electronics and wires or clog the fan so you do need to clean them out. I'm not making this up -- Google, for example, "crazy raspberry ants."

 

Just curious, did you ever spill like soda or juice on your laptop? Not accusing you but it would make sense.

Though once we sent out a Toshiba for warranty repair, it came back quadruple bubble wrapped and a note was written on it that the warranty was void cause they found cockroaches inside..

 

You don't need any form of sugar to attract the ants. Actually, "ant" alone does not say much about the situation. There are different kinds of ants, capable of doing different kinds of damage.

Thermal paste could well be dope or Viagra to some of them!

 

Ants follow pheromone trails as a group behavior so your place must have been infested with ants first of all, and that certain ants have travelled over your notebook and table workspace leaving these pheromones everywhere, thereby attracting the ant herd to walk there.

The stronger the scent trail the more ants on the tracks.

Maybe a good cleaning of your notebook and workspace with alcohol may do the trick. THen you may need pest specialists to take care of the house

A misconception about ants is airborne food scents attract them from afar. They can probably sense food smell in close proximity but not from a far distance as there is lack of directionality of where the scent originated (individual ants are not as sophisticated in sensing and intelligence). Actually ants work kind of mechanistically (ref Dr Edward Wilson, from the Harvard Entomology Dpt). There are ant scavengers or scouts that explore unknown territory in random directions away from the colony. Meanwhile their travel is left with a faint pheromone trail so they can return to the group. If food is sensed, they will return and their return trip will be left with a strong pheromone trail. This attracts other ants that leave their own scent trail leading to positive feedback gain. This is a typical example of high level functioning from group dynamics from simple mechanisms - that is the group dynamics of anti colonies in survival. So when there are ants in a home, it doesnt mean your cleaning is dirty, it reminds you youre living in nature and your surrounding happens to have ants inhabbiting. You can have dirty houses with no ants, and pretty clean ones wiht ant infestation.

 

Brrrr. A previous house of mine had a VERY BAD ant infestion. Believe me, once they come they are hard to get rid of. Once you see ants in your house you should take it seriously and get it fixed as soon as possible, because if you see some in your house it's usually a sign of a much bigger problem.

 

All - thanks for all those suggestions.

I'm going to try wiping down the keyboard and laptop with alcohol and then call in pest control! hopefully, things should be better.

@Tsunade_Hime - nope. No food and drink ever allowed on my computer table. i get quite angry when someone at home does this!

@lead_org - allergic to mortein! I feel suffocated when that's around.

@lines_of_Flight - long time! so far, have been seeing the ants within the keyboard and once near the exhaust. I might just replace the keyboard if it gets worse.

@smellycant - wow! thanks for the advice - am going to try alcohol this weekend.