Comments | substitute: Apple store, Applecare, Powerbook, and a near breakup

substitute

Apple store, Applecare, Powerbook, and a near breakup

Jun 13, 2006 17:15

I took the Powerbook to the Genius Bar at the Newport Beach Apple Store on Sunday. The S key was popping off and clearly broken. This had happened previously to the space bar and they'd just replaced the thing ( Read more... )

mac, geniusbar, consumer, applestore, computers, nearmiss, consumerrate, warpanties, steprightup, angry, apple, warranties

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switchstatement June 14 2006, 01:05:26 UTC

wow, are powerbooks really that shoddy? i know a ton of people with ipods and zero people who have not had an ipod explode on them. does apple make fragile products all around or something?

PREACHY - there are a number of ready-for-desktop end-user linux distros that are, well, very shiny and convenient. i stuck ubuntu on my toshiba satellite and seriously everything Just Worked. you need to apt-get a few things to get proprietary codecs for divx, mp3, whatever (i hear the latest release has a point'n'click utility that even handles this for you), but other than that, no problems. wireless, suspend to disk, widescreen display... all the traditional problem areas are covered. also my toshiba is almost 3 years old, has been all over the east coast, dropped a few times, banged into walls/car doors/humans, a hell of a lot of wear and tear, and i haven't had a single problem with it. not even a dead pixel!

substitute June 14 2006, 01:38:53 UTC

I'm very comfortable with Linux, yeah, so that isn't so much a problem. There's so much good software for Mac OS X, though.

Apple laptops aren't shoddy, but there are some problems. The power supply one is the worst. It's just a bad design and they won't own up to it. Honda replaced my entire transmission for free becaus they made a mistake, for chrissakes.

Laptops break more than desktops. If they can't handle that, they should just charge more for the service policy in the first place instead of taking the free money and then angering the customer. It's just... ca fait l'ennui.

frobisher June 14 2006, 07:02:53 UTC

For what it's worth, my powerbook's only ever had a hard drive go bad on it, and they replaced it with no fuss.

That said, I did take it to our local mac-friendly tech place, rather than to the apple store.

I don't mean to dismiss your concerns (I've certainly had a couple of iPod related issues), but overall, I've been pretty lucky with apple stuff. Maybe they know I'm a shareholder. :-)

substitute June 14 2006, 08:47:05 UTC

Your anecdotal experience is worth exactly as much as mine. However, mine is what I'm going to go on. I haven't broken up yet but I'm not happy.

frobisher June 14 2006, 15:26:43 UTC

Understood. I'm just being a data point.

To be honest, I'm kind of pissed off at them about your experience.

fg June 14 2006, 04:59:38 UTC

i had a toshiba satellite that made it up past 5 years before the keyboard finally went out.

plus isn't there some osx86 crap floating around these days? best of both worlds right there.

substitute June 14 2006, 08:48:50 UTC

Toshiba Satellites are tanks. I don't think I emphasized as much as I should above that I really like the actual PRODUCT. It doesn't fall apart more or less often than other brand-name laptops. The only design or quality problem that pisses me off is the power adapter, which is just inexcusable.

The real problem is the warranty that they now try to weasel out of at every occasion.

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