Back on Track Mac

Resurrected from the dead, my Mac is back in action.  I can write again!  It feels like a long absence, but my computer has sprung back to life, happy once again.

I packed up the poor little thing in its carrying case yesterday and trundled it off to the Apple Store at Del Monte Center in Monterey where I had an appointment with a Genius.  I think that's a lot to have to live up to as a job description.  I would probably have to laugh a lot to bear up under the load.  This particular Genius was casually twitchy and intent on his work, friendly and well trained to help with what must be an infinite number of odd complaints from customers like me.  The service is free for all Apple owners.  Free.  Just wanted to emphasize that little detail.  As in no cost at all.  Amen.

I hauled my little Mac out of its carrying case and slid it across the counter to Ricky the Genius who asked a few questions and fetched a few devices out of discreetly placed drawers nearby and went to work.  He tried to get the Mac to understand the operating system device he hooked up, but the screen remained a blase and noncommittal silver gray with a question mark blinking in its center.

Ricky tried something else, asked another few quick questions and then made a decision.  He said something to the effect of "the hard drive is not behaving like I'd hoped it would," which is Genius-speak for "It's dead; you're screwed."  I had already resigned myself to this eventuality and was about to ask for a recommendation on what model to buy next when he said, "You have two options:  You can take the hard drive out and have the data that's on it pulled off by someone and transferred to another hard drive.  Or you can leave it here and I'll just replace the hard drive and you'll lose your data."

"What do those things cost?" I squeaked.

"The guys who take the data off are other computer business guys - we don't have the time to devote to that here - and they charge a lot.  About $1,500 or so.  I can replace your hard drive here if you want to leave it here for about three days.  Either way, your hard drive is basically not usable anymore."

"What's that cost?" I wondered.

"That's free.  I'll replace it."

"Oh."  I wondered if I'd heard right, if there was a catch, if I was on Candid Camera.  "What do you replace it with?"  Must be a mistake.  He might be offering to put in a dinky-doodle hard drive that only worked at hamster speed and had 256K memory, like the old days.

"We put in like for like.  You'll get the same hard drive.  It takes about an hour."  He excused himself and stepped into a back room and came back in a minute.  "Well, I'll have to put in a different hard drive because we don't have this kind right now.  So, you'll get one that's twice as fast and has more space on it."  Wow.  He named some numbers that kind of went in one ear and out the other; I was still stuck on the word "free" and felt giddy.

"Okay!  That's amazing!"  I was grinning like I'd won the lottery, which essentially I had since a new computer was threatening to cost at least $1,000, more like $1,400.

"Do you want to come back in an hour and I'll put in just the hard drive and you take the Operating System disc home and install it yourself, or do you want me to do that, too, and you come back in about three days?"

I asked Ricky the Amazingly Generous Genius to put in the hard drive and I'd do the rest.  He flicked through the wireless buying process that they use at their store, and in a matter of a minute I was on my way to a cafe to enjoy lunch and kill an hour before I could pick up my Mac.  The new OS (Snow Leopard, for you Mac users out there) disc cost $29.

In this world, for whatever varied reasons, customer service runs anywhere from "We're closed" to what I was treated to yesterday.  I'm happy, pleased, content, empowered, and telling all my friends.  Actually, I'm ecstatic.  My computer was done in an hour as promised, cleaned up and shiny like new, and installed with a much better hard drive. In truth, I have a new computer.  I was an Apple fan before, but now I'm a die-hard fan and may even be close to evangelical, but I'll try to hold back a bit for your sake.

I'm going to go buy an external hard drive next, get some good small traveling speakers to hook up to my Mac.  And I am back on track with my revitalized and trusty little Mac.  Long live Apple!