Less then year ago, I have switched my laptop from PC to Mac. Great, right? Well yes it’s fine. It has good monitor, it’s fast, it’s expensive, but I actually like it.
I have been dealing with computers enough, to know all the praise about Macs comes from people, who have never been using computers, and when someone tells them Macs are better, they need to preach this everywhere. In reality it’s all same thing, no matter if there’s biten Apple on hood or if there’s Windows logo scrolling along the screen. Also in reality my Macbook pro brought me about same share of problems until week ago, as my previous Windows based laptop did.
Putting laptop to sleep instead of properly shutting it down, demands occasional hard resets with on or the other, but I got used to this already. But lately, I started to experience different kind of problems. It connected to Internet through bluetooth and my Nokia E51, or it didn’t. Sometimes it did, but then disconnected and didn’t want to connect anymore. I had such issues before already, and normally new install solved this things. Last week I finally decided to reinstall Mac OSX, especially because in next few weeks, I will have few important things to shoot, and properly working laptop is must, if I want to earn some money.
When I was getting ready to reinstall Mac OSX, doing backups, deactivating Photoshop etc. I noticed battery meter didn’t show any info about battery. I didn’t bother much, because I though reinstall will solve this too. Black cross over battery is no big deal, right? Wrong. After reinstall, black cross over battery was still there, and my laptop was acting as stationary computer. As soon as I unplugged electricity, it went blank. Ok battery out, battery in. Nope, still same. Hmm… this doesn’t sound too nice. Let’s try all possible resets you can find on Internet. Nope still same. Well to make story short, after 8 or 9 months of use, battery died completely. I guess I don’t need to mention nothing like this ever happened with any of my “crappy” Toshiba laptops I had before.
But it doesn’t matter. I guess it happens, and that’s why we have service. I was being pleased a bit too early. There’s unfortunately no spare battery for Macbook Pro, there’s no battery to buy nor to change. Just great. In whole Slovenia there’s not even one single battery? I wouldn’t even bother, if I would need this laptop to play games. But I need it for work, and I can’t imagine how to send photos from sideline of football field without battery. Should I bring 150m cable so I would have electricity on sidelines? Not to mention that in less then 2 weeks, I’m traveling to Varese, Italy, to cover cycling World Championships. Without battery?
So what next? I don’t know, I guess I will start bugging Apple directly. Or do they expect me to have spare laptop, spare battery, spare I don’t know what, because their official service can’t deliver one single replacement battery in 3 weeks?
7 responses so far ↓
1 Robi // Sep 9, 2008 at 1:30 pm
Try Austria.
2 UrosG // Sep 9, 2008 at 2:31 pm
Jebat ga, smola pač. Sicer pa so naši trgovci itak vredni svojega denarja. Zato ti tudi sam svetujem Graz, so bistveno bolj kultivirani.
3 primoz // Sep 9, 2008 at 3:18 pm
Reason why I prefer buying stuff in Slovenia is (also) because of (obviously non existing) service.
I guess I will learn one day, this argument doesn’t really stand in real life. Oh well… I just hope my batter will be here till 20th of September :)
4 Mrko // Sep 9, 2008 at 3:59 pm
I know your pain! Really.
Gone through quite the same issues as you did with my MacBook Pro rev1. Deicded to buy it from a slovene reseller just because of the warranty, like you. Well, I got burned. Literally. My HDD died after 3 months of use. It got so ridiculously hot I got burnt. My battery was crap and was one of those that were supposed to be called in. And the machine emitted this high pitch annoying sound that… frankly, I couldn’t do shit on it. The case was all crooked and… ah, just crap.
After 2 or 3 monts of nagging at the reseller I finally managed to return it and get a full refund. Waited 3 more months for the MacBooks to reach rev2. Sent an email to a reseller in Graz. Bought the black MacBook. Now, after 21 months of daily use it’s still working perfectly!!! Battery still at 99% health after 356 recharges. And just yesterday the battery lasted 3 hours 40 minutes while I was working on the couch (not much stress on the cpu thou, only mail, safari, MS Office and some other small apps running).
The first thing I noticed when unboxing it back in december 2006… it felt like a machine worth its’ money. Not like the crappy MBP I got in Slo. I held a white MB bought in Slo and it felt like crap, all crooked and shit. Two of my close friends that got MBPs from a Slovene reseller have issues with it too. Freezing up constantly, battery is crap, crooked lids and case,… Well, just shit. 2000€ worth of shit.
Slo gets the crappy “well, still class A but just barely and okay for third world countries” hardware from Hungary. If at all possible go get it in Austria. Warranty and everything is taken care of like it should have been! Get it with english keyboard and set it to slo layout. Screw the stickers on the keyboard, who needs them anyway!?
5 Gregor // Sep 17, 2008 at 8:03 pm
Žalostna zgodba, še bolj žalostno glede servisa.
Sicer pa je tudi punci crknila baterija na 700€ vrednem Lenovo laptopu, ki je bil junja star eno leto. Poslan na servis – baterijo menjali brezplačno. Torej laptop vreden tretjino tvojega Macbooka, pa je deležen boljše podpore servisa.
Osebno bi na tvojem mestu premislil, če bi še v bodoče uporabljal Mac-a. :)
6 primoz // Sep 18, 2008 at 8:07 am
Ma za razliko od vseh ultra navdusencev, katerim je Mac trenutno nek kvazi lifestyle, je zame samo racunalnik in nic vec. Sorry… racunalnik s kurc*** baterijo, ker tokrat pa ni bilo “Ja gospod vi ste pa prvi, kateremu se je to naredilo” :)
No zares se stvari kvarijo in to celo razumem, pa naj se gre za nekaj vredno 5eur ali pa 5000eur. In stvari so potem cisto korektno postimali v 10 dnevih, ceprav so bile prvotne napovedi bolj cudne :)
7 Gregor // Sep 18, 2008 at 10:48 am
Ma ja. Enako tudi jaz razmišljam o računalniku, zato na moji mizi še vedno stoji klasičen PC (laptop). Sicer pa je z računalniki podobno kot s kako žensko: Vse se vrača, vse se plača. :))) To velja za hardwer i za softwer. Ne glede na to kje boš delal pizdarije, Mac ali PC, oboje lahko dokaj hitro uničiš.
Skratka, super, da so ti uredili dokaj hitro in da sedaj laufa kot mora.
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