When my MacBook Pro screen went screwy today around 2pm I was convinced that I was going to make an attempt to try Windows Vista. I went over to Staples to attempt to buy Vista and was dumbfounded by the twelve (12!) permutations available to the unwitting consumer. The salespeople had no idea which version to buy (I wanted to install clean which means you can't use the upgrade version) and are basically telling people to just get the Ultimate version. Vista also requires a minimum 1GB of RAM and 15GB of installation space. It's nuts. On top of that, they told me that Office 2007 only runs on Vista, which I don't think is true, but the products are unbelievably confusing. What a scam.
If you have no other reason to boycott Vista it should be for the fact that Microsoft product managers have gone as far out of their way as possible to make it confusing so users will accidentally spend more.
Back to the Mac, I don't see how it's possible that I have Mac hardware go south on me every three months and that there is NO easy way to solve hardware issues. The thought of going back to the Apple store is not appealing and Apple doesn't offer the simple swap out like IBM or Dell. Basically Apple Care just means that I can send my computer in to get fixed, but they don't give you a spare or any assurance that they'll replace the machine if the problems continue.
Today's game is that I think the video card for the screen is dead or dying (maybe unseated?) with the screen having a constant electrostatic-like fuzz all the time (not sure if the screenshot captures the issue accordingly so try this video.) Sometimes if I move the position of the laptop a few degrees in either direction it comes back for a few seconds only to die again.
This $2500 laptop is unusable at this point and I think I give up.
As much as I hate Microsoft I also hate the fact that I stuck on this crap Apple hardware even more. At least if I ran Windows I could just pick a different piece of hardware to hate, whereas with Apple am I just stuck.
Previously:
New Mac Core 2 Duo: Will I or won't I?
An ongoing saga of Apple's customer neglect
Posted by Dave Rosenberg on February 13, 2007 02:24 PM
