One of the things to be careful about when you are blowing the dust out of the fans is to make sure that you are blowing the dust OUT of the electronics and not into them. In other words open the computer case and blow from inside the case to the outside. If the fans are on the power supply check to see where the interior vents are on the power supply and blow from inside the computer case towards the outside. I watch far too many people try to fix dirty electronics with canned air make the problem worse by blowing all kinds of crap right into the air intake.

Wise words.

Thanks for the tip, ND.

Also, don't forget to ground yourself before you poke any of the computer's interiors.

And unplug it before opening, just to be safe.

Also, don't forget to ground yourself before you poke any of the computer's interiors.

I plan on taking it into the kitchen and doing it all on the linoleum so that I can just sweep up all the dust I blow out afterward.

Bwah: [link]

Google's ever-expanding e-mail service crashed yesterday -- the third major outage this year -- leaving millions of users griping and gnashing their teeth in frustration.

"We know many of you are having trouble accessing Gmail right now -- we are too, and we definitely feel your pain," David Besbris, Gmail's engineering director, posted at 4:15 p.m. eastern time from headquarters in Mountain View, Calif.

The problem was compounded because many Google engineers use Gmail themselves to communicate.

The problem was compounded because many Google engineers use Gmail themselves to communicate.

You have to like that they eat their own dogfood though.

Yeah. But they should have a backup email system. Hmail? GmailPrime?

Yahoo mail!