No more telly
I'm old enough to remember a time when, if your telly broke, a Man came round to take it away to be mended. This could take days, but the days felt like weeks. And then the Man would come back with the telly and it would work again and normal service would be resumed. (These days, of course, you'd throw the telly away and buy a new one, which would cost less than getting it repaired.) Anyway, I took my lovely MacBook into the Apple Shop in Central London today, to the Genius Bar (how the employees must love working behind that particular bar), because my "touchpad" had packed up. The cursor could be negotiated around the screen but clicking did nothing, so it was less than useless. I bought a separate mouse this morning, just so's I could work (I have a lot of work to do), and that worked for a whole morning. Then it went too. This was serious.Anyway, it turns out it might be a problem with the casing, so the nice Lady at the Genius Bar had to check my computer in and send it to hospital to be mended - possibly by a Man, possibly by a Lady. I may be without it for 48 hours - and that's if it is indeed a casing problem. (I had been experiencing that thing MacBook users will know all about where the casing starts to fray where the laptop shuts. This is a "known fault" and thus costs nothing to have put right by the entirely fallible Apple Corporation. I am praying that's all it is.)
Anyway, I'm writing this from someone else's computer and I have to get off it now. I just thought I'd share that sense of desolation from NOT HAVING YOUR COMPUTER.
Addendum (15/01/09): As I failed to make clear in the original blog entry, I regularly back everything up to a separate portable hard drive. However, due to the nature of the problem, the work I did on a script yesterday morning and the day before became essentially locked inside my laptop as there was no way of copying it or moving it due to the death of the touchpad. This was frustrating as I can't deliver it either. I may have made this sound worse than it is in my original phrasing. The worst thing that can happen is that Apple wipe my hard drive and I lose this week's work. (Everything else I've written this week has been delivered to people by email, and will thus not be lost, it's just the script draft that's outstanding.) What I should do is back everything up, as I write it, on a portable memory stick or similar. I realise that now. There's a lot of computer users out here in the world of non-IT who don't realise how reliant we are on the simple fact of our computer working every day. I really appreciate the concern expressed in the initial flurry of comments, which had the sum effect of making me feel about as insecure as I've felt in my computing life!
Steve Jobs has now stepped down. I hope he's alright, too.
posted by Andrew Collins @ 7:20 PM
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23 Comments:
Why do you suppose those £150 "netbooks" are selling so well? Having an emergency machine for when something like this happens is a life-saver, even if it is crap. But Apple don't do one of them. Yet.
(says someone who has an emergency "emergency" back-up laptop. Just in case.)
-- David
It's always a good idea to buy an external HDD and save important work on there as a back-up. Obviously. It's certainly never been *quite* as gut-wrenching when a computer has crashed since I bought one.
I shudder to mention this, but I think the terms of repair urge you to back up your files before taking it in, partly in case the hard drive (or even the entire machine) you get back isn't the one you gave in. You did that, right?
You actually left your laptop for repair without making a backup first? That's not insecurity, that's just mental...
Apple (in common with any repairer) have certainly been known to return laptops with the disk wiped and re-installed, even if that didn't initially seem necessary to solve the problem... hope you're feeling lucky!
And you made sure they won't "accidentally" reformat your hard drive while doing this? I hope you have backups...
Your insane not to have everything backed up before handing it over. you never know what could happen. Good luck!
Did I say I didn't have everything backed up, you big panic merchants? Maybe I should have stressed that I have a big fat external hard drive onto which I regularly copy everything. The insecurity is not based on what might happen to my laptop, it's not having my lovely laptop. Also, they are replacing the casing, not fiddling with the hard drive.
"Did I say I didn't have everything backed up, you big panic merchants?"
Not in so many words, but if you have everything backed up, then I don't understand your comment: "I have an actual script which I finished this morning, inside my laptop and I can't get to it for possibly 48 hours, possibly longer. That's the definition of insecurity."
Why the insecurity if you're sitting there staring at a nice safe backup of your script? (And if you are, I hope you're making a backup of that and the other important stuff from your current backup, because as long as your laptop is in someone else's hands, your backup is now your primary copy, and you essentially don't have a backup...)
"Also, they are replacing the casing, not fiddling with the hard drive."
Unfortunately, that matters not a jot. Repairers sometimes wipe hard disks and reinstall operating systems when there is no apparent reason to do so. And specifically, Apple have been known to do it...
Even if you hadn't got everything backed up, there would have been no point them all getting you worried about something that might not happen and which was too late for you to do anything about!
I work with visually impaired computer users, many of whom never use a mouse. It is possible to perform most functions, such as copying and backing up by using different keystroke combinations. its surprising how quick and useful they can be when you learn them, even if you have a functioning touchpad. I usually work in Windows but I think this link may be useful:
http://lixlpixel.org/mac-keyboard-shortcuts/
For the price of one shiny Apple laptop, you could buy three PC laptops. So you'd always have something to work on. I'm not being entirely facetious.
You could also throw even more money at Apple and get on-site repair - which as you know they don't do for laptops, but some Apple dealers provide it.
Slightly more constructively, you could sign up for a service like Mozy, which backs up your files (up to 2GB for free) multiple times per day without action on your part. So even if it doesn't have the very latest edit, it will have something pretty recent.
Patrick, that's very interesting. I wish I'd known yesterday when I was stood at the Genius Bar in the Apple Store - I could have whipped the document to a memory stick and walked away with it.
Still, who wants an easy life?
Dafydd, I understand all the downsides of a Mac. But I'm addicted. I'm writing this at a PC, and it just feels wrong!
PS: The podcast will be available tomorrow as planned - we'll use Richard's Mac if mine's not back. So all is not lost. (We're recording it later than usual so don't go looking for it during daylight. Be patient.)
Geek advice here: I'm a journo (of sorts) and I use Google Docs when I'm working on articles and the like. The best thing is that everything's saved online, so if you lose a PC you can access it from anywhere. You don't have to worry about backing anything up at all, and it's compatible with MS Word and the like.
http://docs.google.com/#all
This message was brought to you by Google Docs.
Andrew, I sympathise. The trouble is, Sod's Law dictates that even if you ordinarily back everything up, somehow, when it really matters, the one time you've not got a backup is when you'll need one. Having said that, it might be worth investing in a memory stick; you can get a 16GB model for under £20 now. There are lots of other simple strategies, such as emailing your work to yourself as an attachment, or uploading to webstorage (your ISP probably gives you some space free).
Henry - I love google docs, and use it all the time, but if you look carefully you'll see 'Beta' in the name, which is shorthand for "you *do* have to worry about backing *everything* up", only in this case you need to create the backup on your machine.
"I had been experiencing that thing MacBook users will know all about where the casing starts to fray where the laptop shuts. This is a "known fault" and thus costs nothing to have put right by the entirely fallible Apple Corporation. I am praying that's all it is."
Mine's done that twice now - both times they fixed it in less than 24hrs (I spose they werent too busy), just dropped in a brand new keyboard/trackpad section.
Oh and the second time mine broke, it did the same thing with the trackpad (but I used the keyboard instead of plugging in a mouse, and that just about got me through a day).
So I wouldn't worry. Oh and they didn't wipe anything from my HDD, despite all the warnings and disclaimers they give you.
As for the script 'trapped' inside your macbook, same thing happened to me the second time - I had an assignment due which I thought I'd saved to a flash disk but it hadn't worked, so I called up the Genius Bar and begged and pleaded (actually I just explained the situation calmly) and they helpfully agreed to email the file to me.
So it needn't be a big problem.
Thanks, Noble Emperor - in fact I've just had the call from Apple: laptop fixed and ready to collect.
Phew!
I have decided to only use it in my house, under my bedclothes, permanently attached to a solar-powered back-up hoist, from now on.
I'm not going down the whole Mac vs PC debate as use Mac's at work and 2 PC's at home. But I do have to admit that when a PC goes wrong it is a damn site easier to get it fixed and a whole lot cheaper than Mac. It seems to be a licence to write a blank cheque when they need any repairs doing to them (even the smallest problem). On the plus side saying that you use a Mac gives a certain 'coolness' to geeky types like me. Though I do admit to having a almost irrational hatrid of iPod's, sticking with my non-standard mp3 player for the future. I still like to retain some geekness at heart.
Would that be an i-Hoist then?
Good news about the pod-cast being back on though. Rejoice! Just when I thought George Bush had committed his worst crime to date by robbing us of Podcast 46 (or 46a or whatever).
Argh! Mine also has that funny thing where the plastic looks a bit tender where the Macbook closes.
I've just bought a Bluetooth mouse for mine, only to hear from the Internets that it's a stinker :-(
(Logitech V470)
Hi Andrew
You may or not be interested in this, but I've started using 'Google Documents' for some important stuff I'm creating. Firstly, because it's available to me online, wherever I am and on any computer. Secondly, because it autosaves every couple of minutes, so no worries about power outages or hard drive failures.
Google docs is a free service that lets you create documents (strangely enough) that have similar features as programs like MS Word, Excel and Powerpoint. Just a thought.
I used to laugh at Apple owners, with their overpriced nonsense, but having had iPhones for the last year or so, everything has fallen into place for me and I love their gear. MacBook for me next.
Hope Steve Jobs is ok. :-/
Doug.
You could also mount your laptop on another (Me Herring's) laptop using a firewire cable, and hold down the 'T' button as you start yours up - this will mount it on the other one as an external drive.
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