So I should be the ground?

December 13, 2008

When we got home from the winter light show at the Idaho Botanical Gardens tonight the trackpad on the MacBook Air was unresponsive. I think it's happened before, though that may be a memory effect, my memory that is. At any rate I managed to use the keyboard to shut down and restart the laptop. Once I did I found out this symptom can indicate a bad ground. The Apple knowledge base article suggests if you can fix it otherwise you should wrest your palm on the wrist-rest. Um thanks but I'm not sure I really want to be the the ground.

Ear splitting whine

December 4, 2008

For the last few weeks I've been dealing with the increasingly ear-splitting sound of a dying hard drive. Yup the MacBook Pro was making noises like the disk was a dying. It is one of those tough things because I can't really afford the time to take it in for repair. Sooner or later, however, it becomes necessary. The high pitched whine became more and more annoying. At the same time when you become aware of something annoying it is harder and harder to ignore.

Today I noticed the power cord indicated it was charging the computer. Odd I thought since it's been consistently plugged in for quite a while. When the power was disconnected the sound vanished. It turns out that while you can run a 17-inch MacBook Pro on a 60W power adapter it's not a great idea to do it for long periods of time.

So having stuck the proper power adapter on the computer and the other one back in the drawer it is time to enjoy the silence.... but wait my breathing just got a lot louder...

Boise needs an Apple store

July 31, 2008

An Apple store is so very desperately needed in Boise. Please Apple if you're listening don't leave us stuck between long drives and our unsatisfactory local choices. Sure we have Boise Mac Life which looks like a great store. When you look a little deeper, though, the advice has been suspect (should one really wait six months to start using Leopard?), the prices are inflated (the "cash discount" price is the list price and the list price shown is higher) and the service leaves us wanting.

Earlier this week we returned home and the MacBook hard drive promptly died. When it came back today it had the wrong OS on it -- a problem I've never encountered with Apple's service directly. Sure it had a nice embroidered Marware keyboard cover, but the time I'm left looking at that waiting to reinstall the operating system on a blank disk just so I can then do the file recovery is making me not like it so much. (Though I sense there are some Drupal keyboard covers in the offing).

Signature Suit

May 20, 2007

We stopped in the Apple Store yesterday for another bad battery on a MacBook. While there we asked about whether they had a Signature Suit case from Case Mate. It turns out they did not but when they saw the one on my MacBook they asked if they could borrow it for a moment and when I said yes they quickly took it on a tour of the store. It was quite a hit and makes the computer look really sharp. Perhaps soon they'll be carrying them. And perhaps soon there will be a brown saddle-leather version as well.

Sick MacBook

October 9, 2006

We have a sick MacBook on our hands. Fortunately (we hope) it is not the dreaded restart problem that some have had. Rather the cause is a battery issue where the battery is not recognized after it was fully drained and the computer left unplugged overnight.

Of course this is probably a decent time for it to break because the only thing we'll miss is yet another post about Google buying You Tube.