Dead laptop’s not much fun
February 27th, 2007
I’ve been running around like crazy this year already. Trying to fight back a Sysiphean ToDo list. But I really feel like I’m swimming through mud this week.
My Mac Book Pro was being a bit finicky about starting back up after sleeping, and today it gave up the ghost entirely. Of course, I had just finished a screencast for one of my classes that took a not-inconsiderable amount of time, and thought I’d just wait to upload it at work, since I’d be hard wired instead of WiFied. When I tried to start it back up, it couldn’t find the hard disk–it looks like the drive is borked. I should be ready for that, but the truth is that I’ve never had a hard drive go bad on three previous Sonys and a Sharp.
And then, I fell down some marble stairs. No, not with the lappy, so the only things damaged were me-parts. But it never seems to happen that you fall down when you are having a really good day–only when it’s already not going well. Must have been dragging my feet or something.
Anyway, I am very ready for spring break–can we just move it up one week, please?
February 27th, 2007 at 6:55 am
Awe Alex!!!!! I don’t know what’s worse, the falling down the stairs or the FUBAR’d laptizzle. (Kidding!!!! We all know organic tissue regenerates!!!) My s/o has a MacBook… his first Apple. I told him to wait just a bit, make sure they’re ok. I keep hearing these stories… makes me sad. More more importantly, feel better. I know it’s probably not your thang, but we are in mercury retrograde. Trouble with short-term travel, computers, and communication. And no signing contracts or buying big things. I don’t know what I think of all that, but it sure feels like it has some merit right now…
February 27th, 2007 at 7:12 am
Sorry to hear about the fall, and the bad MacBook. I’ll tell Steve Jobs to send you a replacement, but just inc ase it takes too long, you might want to drop by the Apple Store to get the genius to fix it :P
February 27th, 2007 at 8:04 am
Well, hard drives do fail and quality of hard drives vary. I can’t say that I would blame apple for a hd failure personally. Backups are our friend. That said, it looks like its actually not a mechanical failure, try zapping the pram
February 27th, 2007 at 11:04 am
Thanks, all. I think it’s going to the school (Mac Acolyte?) rather than a Mac Genius, since it’s the school’s computer, really. Luckily, when it started being strange, I managed to back up all my data files, with the exception of that *$(@$ screencast on using Sketchup that I may or may not redo.
I did everything Mac suggests: cycled the PRAM, reset power management, etc. The install media doesn’t see the HD. So, I’m pretty sure it’s deadski, but we’ll see what they say.
I know drives fail, and I’m not nec. blaming Apple, but from a glance across the web, it seems like the MBP drives are more susceptible to failure than others. Hard to say really.
Generally, I love the computer–it’s been really great. I wish it was about half the weight, and that it was working right now, but otherwise I’ve been very happy.
The other piece of this is that I hate having to get other people to fix my computer. Doesn’t the non-pro Mac Book have a user-upgradable hard drive? Ah, well.
February 27th, 2007 at 12:48 pm
Eeep. Alex, please get rid of my sloppy html above and post this instead:
Speaking of fubar‘d Seems like we’re both damaging our parts this semester, and seeing as how we have exactly the same Apple laptop … well, you can be sure I’ll be backing mine up.