I bought my iMac in 2004. Since then I have experienced exactly two problems with it, outlined here. Customer service has been a dream.
I very rarely turn it off... I know... as much as I'm becoming conscious of energy conservation, this is horrible. As a matter of fact, other than the time we moved into our new house, I can count on one hand the number of times it's been turned off just to turn it off.
So when we went to Florida last month, against my normal instinct, I turned it off. When I came back a week later I turned it on and noticed that the wireless connection wasn't working. So I power cycled it to see if it would connect.
Then... nothing... except a sickening sound from the hard drive. As if the stylus was making like Jackson Pollack on the disk. And this...
I already knew the hard drive was dead, but I took it to the Genius Bar anyway. They confirmed my diagnosis and told me that they would replace the hard drive for $90. This was the first hard drive failure I have ever experienced after using more computers than I can recall.
The thing that really sucked? I hadn't backed up the computer since January when I took it in last. I have two 350 GB external drives, Butch and Sundance, that I made double redundancy backups on. But somehow I neglected to do it before leaving for Florida.
So now I had to explain to my wife how we had lost the majority of our photos from the end of January to July. Luckily I'd posted a number from special occasions on Picasa.
So I went back to the Genius Bar last Thursday to drop it off and have the hard drive replaced. I asked the guy if I could have a larger drive installed and he said no. In fact, he said I was better off going to Beelzebub (Best Buy) and purchase a hard drive there, as it would be cheaper and have a longer warranty. So I went over there and picked out a 500 GB Seagate... never mind the fact that I went to the Geek Squad to confirm that it would work. The idiot over there told me that the G5 iMac required a laptop drive, which I knew was wrong, so I bought it anyway. (PSA time here... don't take your computer to Geek Squad at the Best Buy in Holyoke... you're just asking for trouble). When I went back to the Apple Store to pick up my computer, I told the guy that I felt like I'd sold my soul to the devil and thanked him for his help.
I went home and installed the new drive. Three screws to open the case... three screws to remove the hard drive. I love this computer. I formatted the drive and reinstalled OS X. Over the last couple of days I've been reimporting my pictures and music from Butch. Today I decided to sync my iPod and discovered that I'd saved all of my photos on it. The ones that I'd lost too. I couldn't believe how fortunate I was.
That's when it started syncing with iPhoto and deleted them all. Again.
Needless to say, I now have OS X Leopard installed and it is doing automated backups to Sundance.
I very rarely turn it off... I know... as much as I'm becoming conscious of energy conservation, this is horrible. As a matter of fact, other than the time we moved into our new house, I can count on one hand the number of times it's been turned off just to turn it off.
So when we went to Florida last month, against my normal instinct, I turned it off. When I came back a week later I turned it on and noticed that the wireless connection wasn't working. So I power cycled it to see if it would connect.
Then... nothing... except a sickening sound from the hard drive. As if the stylus was making like Jackson Pollack on the disk. And this...
I already knew the hard drive was dead, but I took it to the Genius Bar anyway. They confirmed my diagnosis and told me that they would replace the hard drive for $90. This was the first hard drive failure I have ever experienced after using more computers than I can recall.
The thing that really sucked? I hadn't backed up the computer since January when I took it in last. I have two 350 GB external drives, Butch and Sundance, that I made double redundancy backups on. But somehow I neglected to do it before leaving for Florida.
So now I had to explain to my wife how we had lost the majority of our photos from the end of January to July. Luckily I'd posted a number from special occasions on Picasa.
So I went back to the Genius Bar last Thursday to drop it off and have the hard drive replaced. I asked the guy if I could have a larger drive installed and he said no. In fact, he said I was better off going to Beelzebub (Best Buy) and purchase a hard drive there, as it would be cheaper and have a longer warranty. So I went over there and picked out a 500 GB Seagate... never mind the fact that I went to the Geek Squad to confirm that it would work. The idiot over there told me that the G5 iMac required a laptop drive, which I knew was wrong, so I bought it anyway. (PSA time here... don't take your computer to Geek Squad at the Best Buy in Holyoke... you're just asking for trouble). When I went back to the Apple Store to pick up my computer, I told the guy that I felt like I'd sold my soul to the devil and thanked him for his help.
I went home and installed the new drive. Three screws to open the case... three screws to remove the hard drive. I love this computer. I formatted the drive and reinstalled OS X. Over the last couple of days I've been reimporting my pictures and music from Butch. Today I decided to sync my iPod and discovered that I'd saved all of my photos on it. The ones that I'd lost too. I couldn't believe how fortunate I was.
That's when it started syncing with iPhoto and deleted them all. Again.
Needless to say, I now have OS X Leopard installed and it is doing automated backups to Sundance.
2 comments:
Hey Joey, great blog.
Can I ask what kind of camera you use? The photos you post are pretty crisp...
I've been using a Canon Digital Rebel (the original one) with the kit lens 18-55mm for random stuff. When I'm shooting macro (for bugs and such) it's generally with the 100mm f2.8 or the MP-E 65mm with a MR-14 ring light.
The Rebel was my first digital SLR and I've been learning photography on it for the last couple of years, but I'm upgrading this year.
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