Powerbook Report: Official Lemon

Last night I was up late (early today, technically) editing a book using Rona’s Powerbook. Before going to bed I set it back up on her desk in the kitchen and logged in as her, leaving it on as we always do. This morning when Rona got up and went to check her email, the computer was off and wouldn’t turn on. Oops.

Since Grandma Arlene was there to play with Zoey I was able to spend a bunch of time patiently turning the computer on, back off, shutting and opening it, taking out the battery and unplugging the power cable and then putting it all back together and restarting, taking notes the whole time. I somehow managed to get it turned on, but it was flickering to Sleep mode and back on randomly while I was trying to log in. Once in I managed to email some files to myself as it continued to flicker off and on. I tried booting it from the operating system I have installed on my iPod for emergencies, but that was a no-go. Eventually I set up the sick Powerbook as a firewire slave to my iMac and was able to back up all of Rona’s files.

Tonight I called Apple, determined not to get off the phone until they had agreed to replace the Powerbook. After about fifteen minutes of carefully bland cross-genre hold music, I spoke with “Cole” in Customer Service, who asked the scripted questions and then tried to get me in a conference call with him and a Product Specialist. However, it turns out they only had records of two logic board replacements, despite this being logic board #4 (including the one it came with). Because of that, I couldn’t get into a conversation with a Product Specialist, but “Cole” said he would connect me up with someone in Customer Care. I mentioned that I didn’t really care which department was going to replace my computer, so that was fine with me.

After probably five more minutes of too-loud nondescript hold music “Cole” hooked me up with “Dee” in Customer Care. “Dee” went through many of the same questions, listened to the same answers, and then looked up the same repair history while I held. She returned to state say that they couldn’t do anything until it broke another time. I suggested she call the Seattle Mac Store to get the actual repair history, since they did the actual repairs which actually occurred. After another fifteen mintues of hold-please hell (during which time I handed the phone to Rona so I could make a pit stop), “Dee” returned to say she had confirmed the previously missing logic board replacement and could transfer me for real to speak with a Product Specialist. Elton John and Unknown Hip-Hop Song #5 must have melted my brain a little, because I don’t recall how long that transfer took.

Product Specialist “Alex” had both the actual repair history and the transcripts from my conversations with “Cole” and “Dee,” so we could get straight to fiddling with the laptop. He had me repeat some of the simple on-and-off things I had been doing all along, and then we moved on to more advanced techniques like “resetting the PMU,” “zapping the PRAM,” and “performing the Allemande Left followed directly by the Dosado.” He finally admitted defeat and explained the next step.

Some time in the next 24 hours I should receive an email from someone in the Making Good On Our Extended Warranty Department. It should contain printable mailing labels for us to slap on any old box we happen to have lying around that can hold the broken laptop. As soon as Apple receives the tracking number from FedEx, they’re going to order us a new computer from the Apple Store.

The new computer will be [[a MacBook Pro 15" (2.16 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 1 GB RAM, 120 GB SATA hard drive, and SuperDrive 6x (DVD+R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW)). It's the bottom-of-the-line MacBook Pro, which means it's only]] a whole lot faster than the Powerbook. The only downside is we’ll need to get a spare battery (the Powerbook’s spare battery will be useless for us but useful to Robert & Barb) and the card reader we have for importing photos from our Nikon’s mini hard drive won’t fit the MacBook Pro’s expansion slot.

All in all, it was a very successful hour-and-a-half on the phone. We will replace our poor broken Powerbook (which was admittedly a gorgeous, dependable workhorse when it wasn’t in the shop) with its faster, sleeker, shinier, more copiously hard-drived, more versatile descendant. May the new Apple prove lemon-free.