I contacted Dell support and they were kind enough to allow me to switch operating systems (from Vista to XP). I didn’t have the option of pre-installing XP at the time, so I went with Vista. After 7 months of having touchpad issues, I started getting the dreaded blue screens of death. Exciting. Today I am officially sans-Vista, and have spent the last 3.5 hours installing XP and all the dell drivers dell left out!

So, Abby and I had the Macbook for a week before the battery wouldn’t charge anymore. I called the Applecare support line, and they didn’t know what it was, and they told me to go to a “local” Apple store to test the battery and troubleshoot the issue. So, I drive to the Florida Mall (45 minutes away) and find out that they can’t fix it, something’s screwy. The guy finds out that I only had the computer for 2 weeks (I didn’t take it down there for a week after it screwed up), and says, “hold on.” He promptly disappears into the back of the store.

When he re-emerges, he says his manager approved that he could replace the notebook with a new one. He starts typing on the computer, and grunts, “your computer is custom, so I can’t change it” (btw-my “custom” addition was a stick of RAM) . He says he will have to take the computer in for repair and will ship it to me direct back.

They had a fast turn around, which was great to see! I gave the computer to the Apple store on Tuesday night and recieved the computer back on Friday morning. Excellent.

When I opened the computer it was gashed on top and scratched on the bottom. Sucks. They don’t include what they did to the computer either, except for the part numbers they replaced. That’s it.

So now, I spoke to a customer service rep named Dan, and he said I can cross-ship a replacement for Abby’s gashed, scratched MacBook with some refurbished parts that I don’t know about. It will take a while, but I’ll have the peace of mind of a new computer.

He said someone will call me back in 24 hours to be my contact throughout the process. We’ll see how it goes. Right now, from what I can see about Apple computers:

• Applecare has speedy turn-around (good)
• They were willing to replace the laptop (good)
• If something gets screwed up later, pray that the repair people don’t gash your computer, because their repair contractors (mine was flextronics) don’t handle your computer with care (bad)
• Your best bet is to buy the lowest base configuration and upgrade yourself, so if something goes wrong, they can change your computer at an Apple Store.

We’ll see how they stick to their promises….

(update) Regina called @ 12:15 today (friday-about an hour and a half later) to update me and confirm everything…waiting for the e-mail with the tags to send the package back.

Over the weekend the gash on the top of the MacBook turned out to be a black goo (my mistake).  Still, there was tons of small scratches on the thing, and I observed a “ripple effect” going through the LCD.

I recieved the e-mail from Fedex early Monday morning. It contained free shipping back to Apple.  I shipped the MacBook back out around noon.

I e-mailed Regina on Friday because I hadn’t heard anything, and it was supposed to be cross-shipped. She sent me the Fedex tracking number. It had left China the day before!

Today, at about 2pm, I recieved a new Macbook in a new package. Amazing!  Regina even called today to see if it was working okay or not!

Basically, from start to finish this whole thing took seven business days.

Moral of the story…Apple support rocks. Flextronics, maybe not so much.

Tags: Macbook, Applecare, Apple Store, Apple support, Flextronics

Well,

It took me about 2 and a half hours to get the macbook connected with our Linksys router. I did a firmware upgrade on the router and suddenly it worked.

Then, I took 3-4 hours to figure out how to enable printer sharing so that our Macbook could print through our XP desktop.

It looks like you have set it up every time to share files.

Then, I’m trying to set up Abby’s e-mail, and the thing is so dumbed down for people that I can’t get to the advanced settings…and can’t set it up without taking alot more time.

Yes, I am feeling the pain of adjusting…

I can see how people like it too, but being a windows man for so long it’s going to take a while to really adjust!

Well, we did it. I probably wouldn’t have made the switch so soon without Abby wanting one (since all her friends have one). I sold my brother my 17″ Toshiba WinBook and bought Abby this MacBook.