Cup of tea spilt into £2,000 G4 Powerbook keyboard. No insurance - er.........HELP!!!

[autopilot]

A friend of mine is in a bit of bother. She spilt a cup of tea in the keyboard of her shiny new £2,000 G4 laptop. She has no home insurance or extended warrenty. She phoned me, being the techie in our group of friends, asking what to do. I told her not to panic, don't turn it on and remove the battery, then try and shake the water out and put somewhere warm and dry for at least a week. Unfourtunately she had already done exactly what she should have not have done - turned it on to see if it worked. Thus probably making things 10 times worse and nearly getting a nasty shock. I can understand why she did though. Anyway, she told me that many of the keys did not work, neither did the sound or networking, bluetooth and a few other things. Harddrive seems intact though. Oh, and I asked her what was in the tea - she said it was black with no suger which I guess may help (less sticky). I told her to stop trying to use it, turn it off and try and dry it out for a few days...

That was over a week ago and it's still buggered, so what are her options? Has anyone dealt with this before? I am not sure if the water has soaked into the PCB and damaged that, or if her using it has shorted some chip out. What componants are most likely to be affected and could someone give me an idea of the potential costs involved. Would it be worth sending it Apple for repair, or an independant repairs company? Is it possible it's still recoverable? Anything else we can do? Do you think we could get away with pleading ignorance and seeing if they will do it under warrenty (it's about 2 months old)?

Any info/advice welcome.

Cheers people.

BTW, this is also posted in the Apple forums. Please delete that one if needed. I posted here after as many more people view it and it is a problem that could apply to any non-Apple laptop too. Sorry for breaking any cross forum posting rules.

[nichomach]

Well, it wouldn't be covered under a warranty anyway; warranties protect against equipment failure, not negligent or intentional damage, and it's going to be pretty obvious what's happened to it. It's a real sod, but I think she's almost certainly got a damaged motherboard from the number of devices/services that have failed. Whether any of the other components are damaged I couldn't say, but I'd guess it's going to be an out of warranty repair - Apple Support

What kind of activities are excluded from my warranty coverage?
Apple’s One-Year Limited Warranty for PowerBook excludes coverage for damage resulting from a number of events, including accident, unauthorized service and unauthorized modifications. Please review the warranty for further details. If damage is outside the scope of warranty coverage, service may still be provided through a local AASP or an Apple retail store, but all service charges will be your responsibility. In such an event, you will be asked to approve the estimated charges and accept the terms and conditions for service before authorizing the repair.

See Apple Contact Page for details on how to find an authorised service centre.

[Kumagoro]

I think the only chance of a non component replacement it to take it apart a little and hand clean it with something suitable.