Matt Mc_Carthy wrote in a message to Roy J. Tellason:

 MMC> It now works as good as or better than new.  Just touch a button,
 MMC> and the function WORKS!  So far it has held up for three days.  If
 MMC> I have to open it again in the next few months, I'll try to form
 MMC> an opinion towards life expectancy depending on how well the
 MMC> silver stuff remains stuck, flakes, peels, whatever.  If it all
 MMC> looks good, I'll add the silver stuff to the rest of the buttons.

Switches are funny things.  I remember years back when I was reading a book
that had to do with electronic musical instruments (which is pretty close
to the title of the book,  though he primarily talked about organs),  and
how in a discussion of keyswitches they author pointed out how a normal
switch may have a reasonable life expectance of maybe a few thousand
operations,  while a keyswitch may be required to operate several million
times over its life.  Which makes me wonder about how they expect to get
away with this cheap crap that they sell for computer keyboards these days,
 with the clear plastic "boards" and the metallic
"contacts" that just flat-out don't work after a while.

I had a whole mess of scrap keyboards here,  some pc but some were from
other types of computers,  mainframe terminals and such.  The cheaply made
ones were mostly tossed,  but the ones where each key had an individual
switch were set aside.  And when I need to come up with some
"buttons" for a project or something where I don't want to screw
around with reliability,  I'll snag some out of those.  Sure they'll be
bigger than the little bitty buttons in most remotes,  but they'll be one
heck of a lot more reliable too!  :-)

---