Update- took it to the Apple shop - yep they reckon the HDD has gone plus needs a new battery.
So now it was 350 $ for the look and the spare HDD to rescue the date, and now another $450 for the repair and new battery. I feel like I have just been Ned Kelly'd !! graz
So now it was 350 $ for the look and the spare HDD to rescue the date, and now another $450 for the repair and new battery.
Don't forget to add another $100-200 for an external drive to use with Timemachine
The drive in my XPS died a few months ago just 4 days before my warranty ran out! Gotta say Dell were awesome about it and sent a dude to my office to swap it out on the spot
I feel for you with you computer woes. The repair is a significant fraction of the cost of a new machine.
However, I'm writing to defend poor Ned's reputation. Ned did not steal from common people. In his horse-thieving days he stole from the squatters, the Clives and Ginas of the day. The squatters of course had got their wealth from legalised theft and were continuing to do so. After the Fitzpatrick incident, when he was made an outlaw on 100% perjured accusations, he took to holding up banks, who held the squatters money. During the Euroa and Jerilderie hold-ups he seconded the local hotel as a temporary prison. In each case he shouted the bar a paid for the drinks and food the 'guests' consumed. Yes, the money came from the banks but the small merchants weren't out of pocket. When they were first on the run after Stringybark Creek the gang turned up at a hotel in Everton and demanded food at the point of a gun. Some weeks later Ned arrived in the middle of the night and paid for the food and drink. He also never shot anyone who had surrendered. Even at Glenrowan, when he was planning to massacre police, he didn't shoot const. Hugh Bracken because he surrendered and was defenseless. Yes, he was a thief and a murderer but he wasn't indiscriminate about it and someone like you would have been safe with him.
Sorry to come across as petty or heavy but I do think history matters. By repeating misconceptions we not only do Ned a disservice, we let some very guilty people off the hook.
Yes I know -was a basic fee of $250 just to take a look.
Me thinks me having a long hard think again next time I upgrade.
Trouble is the Toshiba lappie I had also HD died -at least that was still under warranty.
Where to next? Alienware?
Can't praise my Dell XPS 15 enough. When I got it I had some cash so I went looking for the best lappy I could find, I was even open to a MBP if it turned out to be the one I liked.
Anyway the XPS has an excellent build, similar to my GFs MBP but the XPS has carbon fibre on the bottom so it's a lot lighter than the MBP and it doesn't get anywhere near as hot. Plus the screen is awesome, even higher res than the retina display on the equivalent MBP and even better contrast.
I know I keep comparing it to the MBP but I consider them excellent machines and that's what I was comparing the XPS to when I got it. It's got the same processor, RAM, SSD, and graphics card as the top of the line MBP at the time, with at least as good build quality but the cost was a bit over $500 cheaper.
It runs Windows 8.1, which I know gets a bad rap but honestly mine's only ever crashed once since I got it 14 months ago and that was when the HDD died - I'm definitely no Windows fanboy, and I feel dirty saying it, but that's significantly more reliable than any of the other systems I use daily (centOS, Win 7, various Macs)
As I mentioned earlier when the HDD did die I jumped on support chat with Dell and they sent a tech out to my office where he swapped the SSD out on the spot. I've always thought that part of the price premium on Apple products is to prepay for their good customer service but there were quite a few jealous Mac users in my office after seeing how easy it was to get support from Dell - and I didn't even have to leave my seat!
EDIT: I should mention this isn't a business lappy, it's just a personal one, not from Dells business range, so the level of service wasn't because of anything like that
Yes I know -was a basic fee of $250 just to take a look.
Me thinks me having a long hard think again next time I upgrade.
Trouble is the Toshiba lappie I had also HD died -at least that was still under warranty.
Where to next? Alienware?
Hi Graham,
I feel for you, I have had one or two HDDs fail on me in the past. But in defence of Apple and their products I give you the following. I am unashamedly an Apple fan, so what follows may have a but of bias, but, nevertheless...
My current laptop is a MacBook pro 15" that I bought back in 2011, not long after I was involved in a bad car crash, the lap pie was in the back seat. Check out the pictures for the bend in the Mac. It still works beautifully. I am quite paranoid about backups, so all my computers are backed up to a time machine, so in the event of the inevitable HDD failure it really is a cinch to replace the HDD and get the computer back running.
I have also had reason to return an iPhone 6 recently, swapped over in about 10 minutes, no charge.
I have repaired most of my Apple stuff, even the broken screens on my daughter's iPhones (which is really a job fro the pro's, very easy to stuff it up completely) and find them no worse and sometimes much better than other brands of PC. There are also many, many third party repair places that'll do Macs, unless it's still under warranty I wouldn't advise going to the Apple store or one of their retailers.
I think the problem here is the $250 "have a look at it" fee, $350 for a new battery and HDD installed is OK. I don't know how other manufacturers prices compare for service. If, however, they are retrieving data from the dodgy HDD it's an absolute steal, this is normally in the $ks range.
So sorry Apple bashers, I've had nothing but great service from them, both in reliability and if something goes wrong in the warranty period.
(Now waiting for flames to spontaneously burst from iMac I'm typing this on!)
Cheers
Stuart
Last edited by rat156; 24-03-2015 at 09:17 PM.
Reason: Forgot the pictures, again!!
Hi Graham,
.....
I think the problem here is the $250 "have a look at it" fee, $350 for a new battery and HDD installed is OK. I don't know how other manufacturers prices compare for service. If, however, they are retrieving data from the dodgy HDD it's an absolute steal, this is normally in the $ks range.
No, it was another $450 for the battery and repair, plus $350 for the HD and 'look at it'. $800 by my reckoning.
I'm not 'AntiApple' but their charges are exorbitant compared to PC repair pricing. Normal rates are around $120 hr, HDs less than $100, data recovery for non encrypted drives is the hourly rate. It normally takes me about 45 mins to pull a few hundred gigs off a failed drive unless the electronics have failed.
And DELL are pretty good nowadays with service support. I support about 6-700 PCs in a corporate environment. Getting Apple support is like pulling wisdom teeth, difficult and often painful. They have a policy of if you open up the spare part box but it proves to be not the correct part then you still pay for it. I don't quite figure out how you are expected to problem resolve or test if you can't open the box .... Also zero on site service and a lack of information.
PC's I can normally fix within a day, Apple products can take weeks and don't even THINK about possible warranty issues.
Sorry to Apple aficianado's out there but it is certainly not the easiest product to support, I should know.
I don't like Apple for the grabby nature of redesigning their cables for each iteration of the ipod and stuff.
Have you got a cable for such and such - yes.... oh not that model, the one after it/before it......
Makes you scream.
Then there's no way you can connect half of the hardware because they don't support stuff that isn't theirs.
Well, now we're overstating things a bit now, aren't we.
The original iPod had the 30 pin connector, the other end was either USB or Firewire400. They eventually dropped the FW400 and you only got a USB. The 30 pin connector lasted for about 12 years, which is not too bad for a modern interface, it outlasted FW400 for one. It was replaced in late 2012 with the Lightning connector
They have now standardised on the Thunderbolt connector for external devices and monitors, the back of my iMac has USB, Thunderbolt and an SD card reader. I have a Thunderbolt to FW800 adapter to run some of my older peripherals and a huge USB2/3 hub to run the rest. Last time I looked USB was not an Apple design, nor is Thunderbolt (Intel), they make cheap adapters for other stuff, and it's very fast.
I have a 2008 Mac Pro, which has all these "proprietary" connectors, like USB, FW400/FW800, and ethernet.
So perhaps, before making wild (ly inaccurate) statements, you should, maybe, check the facts out.
Cheers
Stuart
(Did I mention that I'm a bit of an Apple fanboy?)
Well, now we're overstating things a bit now, aren't we.....
.... So perhaps, before making wild (ly inaccurate) statements, you should, maybe, check the facts out.
Cheers
Stuart
(Did I mention that I'm a bit of an Apple fanboy?)
No, not really. PC's have still got VGA ports and USB is ubiquitous for all serial connections. Latest Dell desktops still have PS2 mouse and Keyboard plugs, just in case. Apple stuff, you have to buy 'another' adapter if you want to connect to any 'legacy' device. iPads lost USB a while ago, .... so much for compatibilty and connectivity.
You can't call them necessary upgrades because there was no performance improvement for most of them. USB has gone from 1 to 3 with marked speed upgrades and no loss of backward compatibility.
Apple's policy is just money grabbing.
Sorry, but I'm with Jenchris on this one.
No, not really. PC's have still got VGA ports and USB is ubiquitous for all serial connections. Latest Dell desktops still have PS2 mouse and Keyboard plugs, just in case. Apple stuff, you have to buy 'another' adapter if you want to connect to any 'legacy' device. iPads lost USB a while ago, .... so much for compatibilty and connectivity.
You can't call them necessary upgrades because there was no performance improvement for most of them. USB has gone from 1 to 3 with marked speed upgrades and no loss of backward compatibility.
Apple's policy is just money grabbing.
Sorry, but I'm with Jenchris on this one.
Apple has been using digital video output for years, and due to the form factor of many of their portables it's not really practical to have a physical VGA port. I've worked in corporate for years and haven't seen a display or projector without at least DVI or HDMI for quite a few years...
Btw, iPads never had USB. Apple keyboards and mice have been USB since about 2000, and therefore their machines have had USB ports also. If you're an apple user, you probably don't have these 'legacy' devices around any more
Each to their own choice and all, but it's a bit mean to criticise a company for using the latest standards developed by Intel or whoever. Thunderbolt is great for example. So is Display port...digitally compatible with HDMI and DVI, all of which have been around for years. When you buy Apple hardware you're not buying an entry-level $300 machine, you're buying a premium product, with all aluminium construction (that they brought to market and others subsequently copied), small form factors, good battery life but retaining as good performance as Intel can deliver.
Were many of you equally irritated when Apple ditched PowerPC chips in their Macs for Intel? No, didn't think so
Sorry if any of this offends those of you tuned in to the 'bash Apple' channel
Sorry to hear of your continued woes with your Macbook Graham, that does sound pretty pricey.
Depending on the model of your Macbook, the HDD should be fairly straightforward to replace...some just require the removal of the bottom cover with 8 (I think) screws and the HDD, memory and battery are right there.
Depending on whether or not you want to do it yourself, you could always consider another Mac specialist such as https://www.macfixit.com.au
I don't expect it's any consolation, but a friend of mine used to work in an Apple store, and they routinely seemed to bend the rules to fix machines and make customers happy despite corporate rules. Sorry to say it doesn't sound like luck was on your side that day!
Hi Dunc, yes usually they are pretty good. In fact they are bending the rules to fix it and then let me pay for it afterwards. They have just rang and I can pick it up hopefully tonight.
Now to decide on back up system!!
Do people rely on Time machine considering it is really designed to export the whole machine onto a new blank machine, or do you save pics /software manually as insurance?
graz
. Also zero on site service and a lack of information.
