As a recent convert to the Mac experience, I've come to love lots of things about OSX. I'd hated the previous Mac systems, they were so slow and buggy and unstable. But OSX is pretty nice.

But I cannot say the same for Mac hardware. My PowerBook is all of 30 months old. In that time:

• the hard drive failed (replaced under warranty);
• the cd-r/dvd drive failed (replaced under warranty);
• the firewire port failed (sorry, babe, outta luck);
• two power cables failed (well, it is an awfully thin wire);
• the second hard drive failed ... tonight.

All this in two years and a half??? To add insult to injury, when I first read the Apple Support site, I thought that they would not even want to talk to me unless I pony up (get this) $249. But I was stressed at the moment, and misread that. No, they don't want $249 -- that's only if your Mac is still under warranty. If it's not under warranty, they don't want to talk to you at all.

This is customer service? Geez, for a few ducats you can get even the Redmond devil on the phone! But not Mac.

Needless to say, this makes me question a lot of my professional hardware intentions for the future. I have thousands of dollars' worth of software for Mac, and even though it runs Final Cut Pro (a prosumer software at best) I was even considering an Apple HD system. Now, I'm not so sure.

What shall I do?

Well, assuming that that evil question mark greets me yet again in the morning, I'm probably going to try to re-install the OS. The hardware check says the drive is there, but it doesn't show up for any disk repair utilities. I'm close to concluding that all my info is lost. I backed up nearly everything about two or three months ago, so it's not a total loss. But tonight I was realizing that it's the little things I will miss, like all the bookmarks I had in Firefox, and all those old emails from when I was still doing POP instead of IMAP.

Needless to say, this could put a cramp in my blogging, especially with an out-of-town shoot and the holidays over the next three weeks. Thank goodness I have this old Dell! (I suppose I could use the editing system, but I try to keep that clear of internet junk.)

Is Mercury retrograde? Something should be done about that thing!

-media girl

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media girl also blogs at other places.