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While cleaning out our files from last year's review info, we found today's tech, a simple unassuming little gizmo that had gotten buried among stacks of media kits, press releases, and hardware catalogs. The CapsOff is designed to do one thing: remove the keycaps on your keyboard. Now this might not sound like anything to get too excited about, and quite frankly, it isn't (which is why it kept getting churned to the bottom of document piles and other mounting office junk), but if you ever have a need to remove the keys from your keyboard, especially on several keyboards, the CapsOff can come in handy. Sure, you can use other tools in your computer toolkit to pry off the keys, but you risk marring them in the process. The CapsOff tool looks like a wire whisk with only two U-shaped wires that are molded into a plastic handle. To use it, you spread the two wires to fit over the top and bottom of the key and then rotate it so that it grabs the underside of the four corners. Then you pull up to pop the key off. It works on all of the single, double, and triple-sized keys. It cannot be used to remove the space bar or an L-shaped shift key, but you can pry them up safely after removing the surrounding keys. So what can you do with a CapsOff tool? Well, for one thing, you can use it to remove your keys to wash off the "keyboard plaque," that disgusting build-up of dirt and crud. I don't know about your board, but mine get really funky. I've even had a few keys start to stick as a result. You can remove the keys (don't forget where they go!), wash them in warm, soapy water, and pop them back on. You can also use the CapsOff tool to rearrange your keyboard to the Dvorak layout or add special function keys. One caution: Some keyboards do not have removable keys. Trust me on this one. I tried to remove the keys on my Power Computing keyboard and it snapped off. Luckily a little super glue repaired my blunder. It does take some steady force to pop the keys off, but not that much. If you're getting too much resistance, don't force it. - Gareth Branwyn [1/14/98]
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