Puckish: Yea, the biggest issue is if you have the power to it and liquid is added - with a laptop, the "heart" of the computer is under the keyboard so... ouch.

Normally (of course you never want to do this), but if there was no power to a PC or laptop, you could open it up and spray it with water. As long as you allowed to to dry completely before you powered it back on - it should do no damage. (or course you don't want to try this - since watch *might* warp certain parts and such.)

Best bet now is to take it to a shop and see if they can fix it - they might just be able to purchase certain parts - keeping others that are not damaged - and get it working again, but will probable cost you at least a few hundred for parts and labor I would guess... but might be better then a totally wasted laptop.

Another idea, depending on where you purchased the laptop - try to clean the laptop the best you can to try to remove any indication that something was spilled - then take it into where you purchased it and act dumb and just say it stopped working. Again, worse that will happen is it won't get fixed - but possible maybe fixed - maybe just labor and/or part cost - again, depends on where you got it at and if that place has PC help center and such. (Best Buy - Circuit City both have PC help centers.)