Cleaning your Computer Monitor

It’s amazing how dirty our computer monitors get. Well, I guess it shouldn’t be that big of a surprise with a two-year-old who has to touch everything! Right now I see all sorts of fingerprints and smudges on my CRT monitor. It’s definitely time for a cleaning.

To clean an LCD monitor like a viewsonic monitor is a different process that I’ll explain later.

What you will need to clean any CRT monitor:

Polishing cloth like you might find in an eyeglass cleaning kit or a Nintendo DS, Sony PSP cleaning screen cleaning cloth.
Eyeglass cleaning solution or any cleaning solution meant for CDs or computer screens. Or use rubbing alcohol.

First unplug the monitor for safety. Then try to clean the monitor with just the cloth. If smudges won’t budge, dab the cloth with the cleaning solution and clean in circles (think wax on, wax off! sorry couldn’t resist). The solution will dry really fast, so you may have to reapply to your cloth to finish cleaning the monitor.

Here is my CRT monitor before:

And here it is after:

It might be hard to tell from the pictures, but the monitor does look a lot better.

LCD monitors are a different beast altogether. It is not recommended to clean them with rubbing alcohol although some people use a 50/50(water, rubbing alcohol) solution and report good results. I would stick with gently using a polishing cloth dampened with a little water. Avoid touching the LCD monitor and never pour liquid directly onto it. When in doubt, check your owner’s manual to see how the manufacture recommends cleaning an LCD monitor.