I’ve had a Dell laptop for four years now—that’s approaching ancient when one is dealing with the life of a laptop nowadays. Before that, I had an HP that decided one day it simply wouldn’t turn on. Ever again. I might have panicked, but God had inspired me the previous afternoon to save all my latest writings onto my memory key. Whew! So when my Dell started giving me more issues than normal within this last year, I began to keep that memory key at hand for most of my writing sessions.
Once my Dell began overheating to the point it would shut off after just a couple of hours of use, Hubby and I talked it over and concluded that for my next laptop, we would invest in either an Apple MacBook Air or Pro. One of my first thoughts was, “Yay! I get to knit and felt a new laptop sleeve!” (Which is really what this post is supposed to be about…) My next thought was, “Gulp! I’m going to have to learn how to use Scrivener if I hope to do any writing on a MacBook.” And if a wannabe-author is not using her laptop to write…why spend a ridiculous amount of money on an electronic device in the first place?
That said, I’m typing on my Dell today.
Why?
Very good question.
After talking with an Apple rep from Customer Support, it seems the battery in my MacBook—just a few weeks old, mind you—is corrupt and has swelled inside the laptop, prohibiting the trackpad from operating. And that means I can’t do anything on my laptop except to turn it on and off using the power button, and log in. I could probably do more–but I don’t yet know any of the short cut key strokes. Lovely.
Thankfully it’s under warranty (I should hope so!) and my helpful hubby brought it to an authorized service provider just this morning to get it fixed, but I’d be lying if I said my confidence level hasn’t dropped.
Don’t get me wrong. I love my iPhone, Hubby enjoys his work iPad, and I’ve been using one of the original iPods several times each week ever since Hubby won it at a conference over ten years ago. Our faith in Apple products is why we chose to invest in a MacBook. But I do get a little squirmy when something like this happens in a brand-new product. I suppose on the one hand, it’s better that it goes faulty now rather than a day after the warranty expires (!), but there will always be a part of me that wonders, “Will this be the day the replacement battery fails?”
So what about my new laptop sleeve? Well, that post is going to have to wait now. I had planned to take some pictures of the laptop in the sleeve and I never got around to doing it…and now my laptop is in the hospital…so my knitting/felting post has turned into something else.
I will say this about my new MacBook (because this post isn’t a slam against Apple, even though my brother-in-law would take it as such 😉 ): this laptop is beautifully lightweight, starts up in seconds (remember, I’ve been using sluggish laptops for years), and having the retina display is going to spoil me rotten. And even though I’m going from a 17” screen on my Dell to a 13” screen on the MacBook, I don’t feel the loss of real estate like I thought I would. I’m guessing that has something to do with the crisp quality of the retina display. Plus, I love the trackpad (when it’s in working condition) and the ease of scrolling through documents and switching from one application to another is amazing. I have nothing bad to say about Apple’s customer support, either. The response time to my request for a phone call was immediate and the rep I spoke with was extremely patient, helpful, and articulate.
All in all, my confidence level in Apple is still high enough that I’m praying this early glitch will be nothing but a faded memory two (and more!) years down the road…
Scattered Whimsy 