Author Archives: Hans

Up in the Air

June 22, 2010

I just had to write something out here. This is my first ever post from the air. I’m on a plane from Austin to Chicago and it has WiFi. I’ve been on flights with WiFi before, but they’ve always been short hops from Austin to Dallas. I can barely get my laptop out on that flight, let alone do anything productive.
Some people have told me that they don’t like to be connected while they fly. That the plane is the last place where you don’t have the distraction of the internet. So far I think that I like being connected. I was able to check some mail and catch up on what’s going on in the world. I know it’s only a 2 hour flight. But if you can be productive the why not. I think that the bigger challenge is the fact that there is almost no room to open my laptop.

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Craigslist is just cool

June 7, 2010

We recently got Ethan a new bunk bed. It’s something he had wanted for a long time and so that was one of his birthday presents this year. We decided to sell his old bed on craigslist. I listed the bed and got several responses quickly. I eventually sold it a couple of days later.
Where things get really cool is that we had an extra box springs set that we needed to get rid of. It sat in the guest room for a couple of weeks and I was just going to throw them out. On a whim I decided to list it on craigslist ‘free’ section. I listed them about 12:30 one afternoon. Within a few minutes I had received an email with someone who was interested and they picked it up before 1:00. So, it took less than 30 minutes to unload this to someone who finds it useful instead of going into a landfill.

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Apple Customer Service

May 5, 2010

I would like to share my experience with Apple’s customer service with regard to my MacBook.  First of all I guess I should say that it’s actually my wife’s MacBook.  I originally bought it for her in December 2007 to go along with her iPhone and it is her only computer.  After about six months the drive failed.  We were able to recover most of the files (music, photos, etc…) but it was still a pain.

Over the next 18 months I visited the Genius bar at the Mac store all too often.  When I brought it in for the third drive failure they said that maybe the drive controller should be replaced, and I agreed.  This meant that they would have to send it off to the repair depot.  A few days we received it back with a new drive as well as a new system board (apparently the drive controller is embedded into the system board.)

It didn’t take long before we realized that the screen would black out if it was held at just the right angle.  How frustrating!  We sent it in for a drive issue and it came back with a display problem!  I knew that it would have to be sent off for a few days again, and we could live with the screen the way it was, so I waited to send it off.

Last week we had some travel, so I decided it was a good time to get the screen fixed.  I needed to get the serial number of the unit in order to submit a warranty claim.  The serial number is inside of the battery compartment so I had to remove the battery.  There is a ‘button’ about the size of a nickel which needs to be turned with a screwdriver in order to release the battery.  As I was removing the battery, button broke.  Add one more thing to the list of what has gone wrong with this laptop!

I got the request submitted and made yet another trip into the Apple store.  I spoke with a Genius and he told me what I already knew.  That they could fix everything, including the newly broken button, but they would have to send it off for a few days.  Once more I had walked into the store with a laptop and came out with a piece of paper.

A couple of days later I got an email from Apple telling me that my repair was on hold because they detected accidental damage which voided the warranty.  They included a picture of the plastic button which was broken.  This obviously had nothing to do with the screen blanking out, but they wanted me to pay over $400 for the repair.  Needless to say, I had a different opinion.

I called their customer service department and was transferred to a senior customer service rep.  Her name was Lynette.  I explained everything that had gone on, all the way back to my original hard drive issues.  She was very nice and listened as I explained my frustration with everything I had experienced.  She then surprised me by suggesting that they send me a brand new MacBook!  Of course I wasn’t going to argue with her.  She said that I clearly had a bad experience and she wanted to make it up to me.

This was all on a Saturday.  On Tuesday at 10:30 AM my new MacBook arrived via FedEx.  I transferred the information from the old drive, which they sent to me, in about 90 minutes.  I went from an Apple hater to an Apple lover very quickly.  It is a current generation (so about 2 1/2 years newer than my old one) with updated software and better in every category than the one I had.

UPDATE 5/6/2010  1:00PM CDT

I just got a call from a guy at Apple to make sure that I had the system up and running.  That’s impressive.

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