Maximum PC

Greetings folks, I was sent here by someone who recommended you fine people when I mentioned a challenge. I'm looking for help from someone with experience with an Acer Aspire 8940g or similar model, who might help me figure out how to remove the keyboard for cleaning. It's just proving a lot more difficult than past Dell laptops I've had.

I've just bought this Acer new a couple of weeks ago and (though I'm usually very careful about such things) I spilled some cereal and a little milk on a portion of the keyboard. There seems no ill effect so far, even 12 hours later (running the whole time), but I would like to remove any cereal bits in there even after the milk has dried (which could also start to stink after some days).

The thing is, I can't seem to remove the keyboard for cleaning. With any past Dell laptop I could have easily done this. With this Acer, I've removed all the screws on the perimeter underneath (there are none up top under a removable snap-on lid like on the Dell), but I can't seem to easily separate the bottom from the top. It feels like there's something I still need to do, and I fear tugging it to finally separate the two.

So again, with Dell, they gave instructions on how to do it, but not on Acer's site. Worse, when I asked Acer support about it, I was told flatly that they do not provide such instructions. They don't intend any user servicing to clean the keyboard. Of course, I can send it back to them for 7-9 days and $199 (plus shipping to them). No thanks.

Wow, it's like I've bought a Mac! In 20+ years of owning PCs I've never had one intended to be a closed system without user-serviceable access to something simple like this.

So does anyone here have experience opening this particular model or ones like it?

I don't care if it "voids my warranty". Their customer service so far has been so shocking that I doubt there's any value I'd get from such a "warranty". Thanks for any thoughts.