Thursday, June 23, 2005
10:10 PM — When it pisses, it shits
Even worse than "when it rains, it pours."
This evening I was surfing the web, diddling around on CNN and BlogExplosion as usual, thinking about taking a nap, when suddenly the screen flickers and freezes. As I watch with growing concern, lines form and start spreading horizontally across the screen. Wiggling my finger over the touchpad not only does not move the cursor on the screen, it draws attention to the fact that the edges of the screen are turning gray and spreading.
I remember thinking to myself the day before, that the hinge between the screen and the body of the laptop is the weak point in the system, but I restart to see what'll happen. Nothing. I mean, the screen goes blank as it should when I initiate the restart, it restarts, but the screen stays blank. I hear the hard drive whirring, when I hit the "volume-up" button I hear it make the noise it's supposed to, but the screen's blank. I restart a couple more times with no change. Getting ingenious, I find my monitor adapter and plug in the desktop's LCD screen. That also fails to do anything interesting.
The Apple Care phone number is on my computer. I could look it up online on the other computer. The serial number is on the laptop. But it's also on my Apple Care agreement plan, located in my secret place with all my other important documents (my sock drawer), as is the Apple Care number (800-APL-CARE), so I'm all set.
10 minutes on hold, and 15 minutes chatting with "Cassie" (the first female tech support agent I've "met," and one of the few without the least trace of Indian accent), and they're shipping me a box by Tuesday, taking up to 7 days to replace the video card, and then sending it back (signature required) to my workplace.
Probably less than two weeks, all at no charge to me, and in net, better than my car! Nearly all the material I recently worked on was duplicated in three places: the (now defunct) iBook, work computers, and my USB drive. To be on the safe side, I'm going to take the iBook in to work tomorrow (via bus) and over to T$'s for the weekend (via coworker who lives in Montague and commutes daily!) so I can mount my iBook as a HD on either my work Mac or one of his and pull off any additional material I need and get it onto my USB drive before I send the iBook off.
Moral of the story:
GET APPLE CARE!
Most Apple laptops come with a few months of it, but you MUST extend it as long as the they'll let you (for around $250). T$ said fixing this would probably cost me around $1,000 without the Apple Care, so I'd be more likely to buy a new one instead if I didn't have it.
P.S. Check out this Apple battery recall. ¶ permalink | 1 musings
This evening I was surfing the web, diddling around on CNN and BlogExplosion as usual, thinking about taking a nap, when suddenly the screen flickers and freezes. As I watch with growing concern, lines form and start spreading horizontally across the screen. Wiggling my finger over the touchpad not only does not move the cursor on the screen, it draws attention to the fact that the edges of the screen are turning gray and spreading.
I remember thinking to myself the day before, that the hinge between the screen and the body of the laptop is the weak point in the system, but I restart to see what'll happen. Nothing. I mean, the screen goes blank as it should when I initiate the restart, it restarts, but the screen stays blank. I hear the hard drive whirring, when I hit the "volume-up" button I hear it make the noise it's supposed to, but the screen's blank. I restart a couple more times with no change. Getting ingenious, I find my monitor adapter and plug in the desktop's LCD screen. That also fails to do anything interesting.
The Apple Care phone number is on my computer. I could look it up online on the other computer. The serial number is on the laptop. But it's also on my Apple Care agreement plan, located in my secret place with all my other important documents (my sock drawer), as is the Apple Care number (800-APL-CARE), so I'm all set.
10 minutes on hold, and 15 minutes chatting with "Cassie" (the first female tech support agent I've "met," and one of the few without the least trace of Indian accent), and they're shipping me a box by Tuesday, taking up to 7 days to replace the video card, and then sending it back (signature required) to my workplace.
Probably less than two weeks, all at no charge to me, and in net, better than my car! Nearly all the material I recently worked on was duplicated in three places: the (now defunct) iBook, work computers, and my USB drive. To be on the safe side, I'm going to take the iBook in to work tomorrow (via bus) and over to T$'s for the weekend (via coworker who lives in Montague and commutes daily!) so I can mount my iBook as a HD on either my work Mac or one of his and pull off any additional material I need and get it onto my USB drive before I send the iBook off.
Moral of the story:
Most Apple laptops come with a few months of it, but you MUST extend it as long as the they'll let you (for around $250). T$ said fixing this would probably cost me around $1,000 without the Apple Care, so I'd be more likely to buy a new one instead if I didn't have it.
P.S. Check out this Apple battery recall. ¶ permalink | 1 musings
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