18 February 2005
by Noah Kravitz
Reviews Editor

Polish that apple

I stopped by iKlear's booth at MacWorld last month and they were kind enough to send me off with a sample iPod/'Book Polishing Kit to put through its paces for these pages. iKlear is a cleaning/polishing solution for most anything with a delicate LCD screen and/or plastic or metal case, and it's the same stuff Apple has been recommending for years and is now selling at their stores. In fact, KlearScreen products (of which iKlear is a division) are recommended by more computer manufacturers than you'd really want to read a list of right now.

In a nutshell, this stuff works. The $20 Polishing Kit consists of a 2 oz. spray bottle of iKlear Apple Polish, three wet/dry travel singles, one large micro-chamois polishing cloth, and one travel size micro-chamois polishing cloth. Cleaning is pretty simple: spray, wipe clean, and polish. The travel singles let you do this without lugging the spray bottle around -- you clean your surface with the wet single and polish it with the dry one.

iKlear works very well. Meridrew claims that their products not only clean your electronic goodies but also leave them with an anti-static coating which resists dust, fingerprints, and wear and tear. I can't yet comment on the wear and tear part, but I did notice that my iBook screen has gathered noticably less dust since I cleaned it. iKlear spiffed up my iBook and iPod alike, and it's safe to use on chrome as well as plastic (so it's entirely iPod friendly).

I couldn't quite get out the eight month-old handprints which have settled in to either side of the trackpad beneath my iBook's keyboard, but it wouldn't quite be fair to expect such a miracle considering I hadn't cleaned my computer once in those eight months. The rest of my machine looks great and, again, the solution and micro-chamois cloths are gentle enough to use on LCD screens without fear of scratches. Beyond that, the large size cloth included in this kit doubles as a laptop-sized keyboard protector.

This kit as well as individual spray bottles, wet/dry singles, and polishing cloths in both micro-chamois and micro-terry cloths are all available from the klearscreen store. The company states that iKlear products are specificially engineered for Apple (and Dell) products, so make sure you choose these and not Klearscreen's other solutions.

The iPod/iBook/PowerBook Polishing Kit is available for $19.95 plus shipping direct from store.klearscreen.com and also at the Apple Store (compare prices at PCPrices).

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Noah Kravitz runs the Technology and Culture blog Threebase.com. He is an educator, musician, and writer who lives in Oakland, CA and is the author of Teaching and Learning with Technology.