3.16.2006

Ask a Question Thursday

Periodically, we feature Ask a Question Thursday. Honestly, we've held it on different days...but for our purposes today, it's Thursday, hence the name.


Today's question comes from regular commentator Mikie3toes:
I have followed your blog for some time now. I've lost count of the number of hardware failures you and yours have experienced on your Macs. Why are you so loyal to the Mac, given the number of problems you have had?


Great question, Mr. Triphalanges. It's true, I am a dedicated Mac user, although that's a bit of a redundancy.

For years I was a PC user. I did not know much about macs. For a good fifteen years, I thought as a child and I spake as a child and I computed as a child. It was a two year period of seeing through a glass particularly darkly that caused me to look to the Bright White Side.

When I joined the staff of an unmentioned megachurch, I was issued a new laptop. I was excited. I'd had laptop computers before, but they were always castaways that had served their time. This was my first new (i.e. functional) laptop.

Two weeks after joining staff, it arrived and went straight to IT for prep. It loved IT. I assume so anyway, because it spent most of the time I had it in the IT office.

In the pursuit of clarity, it may not have been entirely Dell's fault. When IT issued it to me, they had stripped off Windows XP and replaced it with Windows 95. This is not a misprint. Perhaps a crime, but saddly, not a misprint. When I inquired as to why they did such a thing, the reply was "We don't service XP." That struck me as something akin to the car dealer pulling new engines out of new cars and replacing them with last year's engines because "we don't work on new engines".

The Dell was a dud. I performed the three finger reboot salute multiple times each day. It would lock up when I taxed it by doing such outrageous things as checking email or opening a second program. It would go to IT, IT would send it back to me. I would sent it back to IT. It was a Radio Shack version of Hot Potato.

When it came time to buy my own, I bought a Mac. To chronicle the headaches, we bought two iBooks - a 12 inch for me and a 14 inch for Kelsey. In the first year, I lost three logic boards and a hard drive. They gave me a new iBook. Kelsey lost one logic board.

I wore the second iBook out. Literally typed the letters off the keyboard. The logic board and hard drive croaked at 11 months and one week. They replaced both.

Kelsey's second logic board died last week, just short of the three year waranty expiring.

In December, I was gifted with a 17 inch powerbook. It is an awesome sight to behold.

You know what? Even with the headaches, I'd buy another one...even if it goes to the shop for a week every year, I'm still time ahead given that I'm not rebooting three times a day. Like all machines, they break. Unlike my PC experiences though, my Macs generally work like swiss watches.

Thanks for your question, Mike3toes. My question to you....are you Mike3toes because that's how you resort to rebooting? :-)

6 comments:

ylmurph said...

I might know your brother, Stevie3toes. Does he live in the Cincinnati area?

Randy Bohlender said...

Mike

leaving it on works fine providing you don't have to move it. I'm lucky to be in one spot for 2 hrs....

What about the toes that were removed? Do you still have them? Are they useful, perhaps in abstract math?

P said...

Tripe.

Ihave 10 computers in my house, 1 is a server. I reboot one machine that I leave on all day because of a combination of fairly exotic software applications that run concurrently, and I havnet tried to fix it.

I HAVE NEVER had to bring a computer in anywhere for repair for a bad board on anything that I know of.

Tha bald head, IHOP, and Mac devotion. Face it, Randy doesnt like Macs, he's in a cult and cant stop it. Hes in too deep, and he needs help soon.

Jackson said...

Let it be known that the "fairly exotic" machine Sean is referring to weighs about as much as the Titanic and is louder than a cat getting its tonsils pulled.

So, in fact I believe "fairly exotic" should be translated into, "fairly archaic". It is, as the home-seller puts it, "loaded with character".

P said...

Fairly Archaic?

You mean the laptop that has all the .net development software suite, Office Developer, a mobile recording studio, Web Development Tools, SQL Server, 4 different Accounting programs, Graphics programs, a DVD/CD RW, movie screen, 1 GB of RAM, 100GB hard drive, hyper threading processor...

and thats all I can come up with quickly (oh yea a 6 different poker programs)

Ok Big talker....

LOL


BTW.. "Fairly exotic" referred to the software combinations, not the machine.

If I wanted a wimpy little pretty laptop to type emails on (instead of develop websites), or listen to music (instead of create it) I could live with a mac.

Your Dad has indoctrinated you. It is now my personal mission to dis-edumacate you boy!!!!

I didnt make that pact with Bill Gates and get that special chip in my arm for nothing....

Randy Bohlender said...

I cannot believe I have geeks talkin' trash in my comment section. Put your pocket protectors away, boys. This is gettin' ugly.