Kids. Leave them alone for five minutes with your computer and this is what they do to it…

I was actually swapping in a new HD for my Macbook Pro, a 320 GB monster to replace the titchy 200 GB  item with which it was supplied. I did this by buying a Western Digital external USB HD (that’s its red enclosure in the background), putting its HD into the Macbook Pro and then the Macbook Pro disc into the WD enclosure to use as a backup. After a frightening moment when the MBP wouldn’t boot (hadn’t pushed the RAM sticks all the way back in – rookie mistake, RAM always needs a heftier push than you think it needs or dare to give it) all is well. I used CarbonCopyCloner to copy the old internal disc over to the new external one before doing the swap and voilà, instant new HD.

The MBP has actually been poorly this week for the first time in its life (14 months old and counting now). Luckily I bought the extended AppleCare warranty to extend the regular 12 month warranty to three years, and it’s paid off; the left fan failed, unremarked by me, and subsequently the left I/O board overheated and failed, taking out the left two USB slots, the sound and the Airport WiFi card.s A quick search on the Apple website (the MBP still worked and connected to the internet via wired Ethernet) and I found my local Apple approved repair shop. Dropped it in Monday evening, collected it repaired Wednesday afternoon, no charge for a repair which would otherwise have cost me about €150 in parts and double that in repair person’s billable hours, i.e. more than the €367 I paid for the warranty last year. Bargain. And it’s a worldwide warranty too – break down anywhere, get it repaired for free in the local Apple repair shop, no charge.

So yes, Apples do break down. But as I’ve said many times in the past, you judge a company by how they put things right when they go wrong and in this case the service was exemplary.

I’ve been following David Allison’s move to Macs with interest, having done the same myself over a year ago. His latest post neatly sums up my thoughts. In fact while my MBP was away in the clinic I used my old Windows XP machine – another decision I made a very long time ago was to keep as much of my work online as possible so my computing life continued almost seamlessly – and found that I didn’t hate it. It worked fine. But now that the MBP is back, well, it’s turned off again.