Oh, the saga.

So, it has been a little while, and that is for a reason - there was a saga. A sad saga. :(

My divinely gorgeous piece of kit was ill! So ill, in fact, that it is now sitting being looked at in Apple, and I have a brand new one. So. What happened, I hear you ask?

God only knows what the actual issue was, because no amount of testing on the Mac support forums could work it out, but it was something to do with the GPU firmware. It was causing lots of vertical purple lines on the screen.

Here is part of my desktop: http://img8.imageshack.us/img8/7267/img6409x.jpg
Here's the whole desktop normally: http://img12.imageshack.us/img12/2628/img6412r.jpg

How horrific! So, obv, first thing I did was Google it, and discovered I wasn't alone (I had somehow missed a post on Engadget about it which I got through Mail, dunno how I missed that one!) - there were a ton of people having the same problem, which they attributed to the NVIDIA 9600M GPU. Now, I had never used the 9600M GPU - only the 9400, because I was all for the better battery life, and figured that for what I use this beastie for, I probably wouldn't need it for a while (which begs the question why I have this thing in the first place, but how and soever). I put in my tuppence worth. I rang up Apple, but had a feeling it wasn't going to be something they could solve over the phone, and boy was I vindicated when the person on the phone asked me to remove my battery.

I lol'd. Lots. Why? You would too, if you'd spent the better part of three days on a train testing the battery life of the new, shiny, non-removable battery, subject of scorn on tech blogs who like hotswapping over actual decent battery life. (there's a video and everything, at http://www.apple.com/uk/macbookpro/)

So. I was NOT amused, and told the guy on the phone, rather snootily as I felt like I was dealing with a complete idiot at this point, that I could not remove the battery, as it was the new 17" MBP with non-removable battery. He was confused. He put me on hold. He went to speak to a Tier 2 support person (I later found out the Tier 2s all work out of Cork and France, how cool is that). He came back to me and told me I would have to go to my nearest Apple store as they could do nowt for me on the phone. I was cross, as the nearest Apple store is in Liverpool. He booked me an appointment. I went to the Apple store and met the lovely James.

The lovely James changed my world - he was a smart, geeky, funny little ginger who knew his stuff. He asked me what was wrong. I opened up my MBP, and he excitedly went 'oh, the new 17"!' I turned it to him and said 'you tell me', at which point he recoiled. He asked if it was a custom configuration from the online store. I said yes. He then started to apologise in an embarassed way for what the Tier 1 I spoke to said, because (as he said) they couldn't replace it in store - it had to be shipped out and customised. I didn't mind too much as he was so nice. I could have taken him home to my Mum, he was so sweet. He showed me many things. I lol'd when he asked me what the FCC of my machine was - he meant the full charge capacity (which means my battery has many millions of powers), I thought he meant the serial code of the certification from the Federal Communications Commission. Too much Engadget. Sigh. The online store peeps emailed him a form I had to fill in. I did so. He emailed it back to them after I went home.

Two days later I'd heard nothing from the online store, so I called them and said 'OI!', to be told that they'd received my email back (via James), and would now process my return but I had to wait for their supervisor to ok it because I wanted it before I had to send back the old one. I said I didn't mind if that was the case :P The girl I spoke to (Michelle) was clearly American, and was so wonderful and 'go the extra mile'-like that if I could have sent her a box of choccies I would have. Then, she sent me a PERSONAL email to say she'd checked and my replacement machine had been sent, and the returns number, and the tracking number, and the date it was going to arrive, and the contact details for TNT in case they didn't contact me to pick up the dead one.

I was so pleased. I backed up the old machine and happily sat and waited (well, I went to Ireland). The new one was delivered last Monday, exactly a week after I first called to say 'wtf?!' Good service? Yes. I should think so.

Except for one thing - they needn't have bothered. One tiny bit of communication between support teams would have told them that there was a firmware update in the works being rushed out to solve the problem - and one day after I received my replacement MBP, what did I get? The firmware update. Which fixed EVERYONE else who'd been told to wait. LOL.

I found this hilarious, so so so hilarious. Oh well! At least now I have a newer machine which is still virgin, and is so so wonderful. :D And has no ugly PAT tested stickers on the power cables (thanks, stupid UK law).

So now I've had this one for just over a week and I still love it, although I was in my brother-in-law-to-be's house over the weekend, and he (being married to an Apple Sales Senior Account Manager) has ten million Macs in his house (his 6 year-old son has an iBook G4, for christ's sake, but it was an obsolete one!), and he'd just gotten himself a brand new 13" Macbook. It was SO cute, like a baby one of my big monster, and I wanted it sooooo bad. I'm so sad, really. I just liked how portable it was, but I really, really appreciate the screen on this baby, so I think I'll be sticking with this one. For a number of YEARS.