Category: Technology

Via boing-boing, I came across this promising review of the new MacBook released the other day. My first thought was “Damn! And I just spent $300 on this laptop to get it fixed!” But the more I think about it, the more I will probably want more than the “basic” model, which is around $1100 (though there might be some kind of education discount). According to the review, the totally maxed-out version of this computer is around $2K. That might be too rich for my blood, but something in between those two extremes might be interesting.

In any event, unless something very unexpected happens, I think I’m going to wait another year….

I’ve only had a chance to skim this, but it looks like potentially interesting reading later: “AppleCared: My Life Inside Apple and AppleCare,” a sort of “behind the scenes” look at the fast-paced and exciting world of tech support.

By the way, I’ve been pretty pleased with my now repaired iBook. I can even use it without it being plugged in– amazing! To me, it also looks like they did something to the screen because it doesn’t have any key impressions anymore and it seems a lot, well, cleaner. I don’t know if they would have actually replaced that though.

I also went ahead and wiped and then rebuilt my harddrive. The only thing I lost from all of that was my address book (oops, forgot), but that wasn’t all that important.

And on the plus-side, it just seems like everything is running better to me. Years ago, a computer geek/tech support person told me that it was a good idea as a matter of “spring cleaning” to wipe and rebuild computer hard drives about once a year or so. When I asked why, what difference would it make, he said something like this: “Computers are kind of like toasters in that, the way that bread leaves crumbs, software leave little bits of fragmented code all over the place. When the crumbs/code builds up, it can be a problem. With a toaster, what you do is every once in a while turn the thing over and give it a good shake over a garbage can. With a computer, you erase and rebuild the hard drive.”

I’ve complained several times here over the last few months about some problems I’ve been having with my iBook laptop; just to recap, since December, I’ve had some kind of short/power problem that won’t allow me to run my computer on battery power. On the one hand, it’s not a big deal; on the other, what’s the point of having a laptop if you can’t use it when it’s unplugged? And besides that, it’s a pain in the ass to have to shut down and restart the computer every time I move it, even if I am only moving it from one room to another.

So, given that I’m not quite ready to buy a new one yet, it was time for a fix.

Yesterday, Steve B. and I made the pilgrimage to the Apple store in Novi (about 30 miles from here) to drop it off. I figured it would be more efficient than trying to deal with Apple customer service over the phone. I filled out some forms at the so-called “Genius Bar” with someone who seemed to take his job title of tech support er, “genius,” a little too seriously. Amusingly enough, there were spots on the form where said genius inspected to see if there was any visible cosmetic damage or liquid damage. In other words, if you drop the computer down the stairs and/or spill a beer into it, you have a whole different problem.

Since I didn’t drop it or spill anything into it (and as I think about it, it’s surprising to me that I’ve never done this with any computer I’ve had, and I’ve had computers for over 20 years now), and also since I didn’t have the AppleCare deal and my computer is long beyond warranty, this repair is going to run me $300. This was a tough call, and it falls into that space where people contemplate buying new cars, appliances, lawn mowers, etc.: while $300 might be too much money to spend on a repair, it’s a heck of a lot cheaper than buying a new one. I’m just not ready to buy one of these new MacBook Pro things yet, and I figure if I can get another 12 to 18 months use out of this, then it will be worth it.

According to the Apple Support Repair Status page, my computer repair is “on hold” for a part. Hopefully, this “hold” will be brief. Though to tell you the truth, it probably won’t be the end of the world if I can’t get access to my laptop for a week or two. I’m typing this message right now on my son’s Windoze PC, my wife has a iBook I can borrow, I have two computers in my office, etc., etc. I am hardly technology deprived. Still, I kind of want my computer back. Like right now.

Man, I wonder how this withdrawal will feel in August when I’m away from pretty much any computer for (gulp) three weeks?

Okay, I’m going to start doing what I really should be doing right now; actually, I’m going to start doing stuff I should have been doing a week ago. But I thought I’d post a link to my latest distraction, Google RSS Reader. I stumbled across this via boing-boing.

This is something that will probably figure into my teaching sooner than later. With RSS feeds becoming as easy and as flexible as this, I don’t think there’s much excuse to not do it anymore….