Wednesday, July 2, 2008

Another One Bites the Dust

Today was the day my Macbook hard drive gave up the ghost. Now, let me do some calculations. Two Macbooks in the same house.. subtract 2.. carry the 1... divide by 10. Ok, that means that my Macbooks have had a 100% failure rate within the first three years. *NICE* Oh, and keep in mind our old G4 TiBook went back to the shop once and my G3 iBook went back twice.

Apple, I've owned many, many laptops and yours are the only ones that I've ever witnessed have a predictable <3 year hardware failure rate. This is simply unacceptable, has been unacceptable and remains so. Why am I paying a premium, and a fairly hefty one, to continue to have these kinds of problems? If you figure it out, please let me know.

While you're thinking about that keep in mind that I just dusted off a eight year old beast of a HP laptop out of mothball, installed Linux and made a file server for a local business that couldn't afford decent hardware. Guess what? IT WORKS! I still like OS X but with the advancements in Ubuntu I ask myself what would I really miss if I switched right back to where I switched from? Back when I got my G3 iBook OS X was a clear leader on non-Micro$oft desktops. Now, not so much. Some OS X only applications are nice, but really, let's face it, I could unlock my iPod all the same and use it under Linux. Or I could just toss the damn thing. Or resell my iPod Touch (e-mail if you're interested, I might make a sweet package deal on a Macbook with a fresh OS X install, new HD and a 16 gig iPod touch).

Should my Macbook die again (my Applecare expires around June/09) the laptop picture above, or one like it, could well be my next personal use laptop.

Apple, I've been a good ambassador for you and your products. I've personally helped switch people. But a 100% failure rate over the life of FOUR laptops is, as I have stated, simply unacceptable. Get your hardware in order!!! Really, Mr. Jobs? How are you allowing this to continue? Where is your eye for detail? Does it stop at the desktop and a pretty case these days? It should not. I had my sights set on upgrading to a Macbook Pro next round of bonuses. Now, I'm not so sure. This is getting more than a little annoying.

1 comment:

Tanner Lovelace said...

I think your main problem may be that you keep your original Apple Hard drive. I'm currently on the 3rd hard drive in my MacBook (which, if I recall correctly, is the same one as yours) and only the first one was the Apple one. I started with their 80GB hard drive, then about a year ago moved up to a 160GB hard drive from newegg.com and then recently moved up to a 320GB hard drive (again from newegg.com, and for only $112!).

Now, that's not to say it's all been ok. I had my battery die upon coming back to the US from Spain. It discharged more than it should and wouldn't recharge again. I've also had my power supply replaced because the LED stopped working, and then it stopped charging! I've also had the top replaced for for staining (back when they were doing a lot of them) and I've had a bit of screen flicker (but haven't had that fixed yet... need to do that soon). But, all in all, I'm very happy with the MacBook.

Now, jklGoDuke did have the hard drive die in her MacBook which we got a year ago. I heard at the time that they had a bad batch of hard drives that went into a bunch of machines, but I don't count the hard drive as the entire computer. Yes, it's a pain, but it's easier to fix than the Sony Vaio I used to have that had a design flaw in the CPU that didn't manifest itself until it had been used a couple of years and then it just started dying randomly!