Yesterday, I was at an event where, during a discussion on developers becoming evangelistic on their various technology choices, another delegate referred to the “stickers and t-shirt” brigade. That made me laugh (and he was joking) as my Surface Pro wears quite a few stickers (though I struggle to find good ones for Microsoft products…) and only the night before I’d been removing one that was dragging down the overall tone.

After removing a large sticker that was starting to look a bit scruffy (using a plastic spatula to try and prise it away in pieces), I was left with a lot of sticky mess. Inspired by a WikiHow article on removing stickers from a laptop, I first used some cooking oil, then some window-cleaning fluid and finally a baby wipe to remove the glue, leaving the surface clean.

These may sound like strange materials for removing stickers but I didn’t want to risk anything stronger as it might damage the paint on the device (which isn’t actually mine – it’s my work PC). The end result is some pristine new real estate for a new batch of stickers (maybe there will be some at the Azure Red Shirt Developer event tomorrow…).