Cheryl on the Web

When I started this blog just over a year ago, I was raving about my new MacBook. It looked good, it performed well, it was cute and sexy and intelligent all in one package! 15 months later though, I’m beginning to feel like a slightly disgruntled customer. I so want to love Apple, as much for their ideology as for their products, but they are making it tough.

My primary complaint here is about value for money. The MacBook was in the “upper middle class” of notebooks when I bought it back in the fall of 2006; I could have gotten a “PC” notebook with the same specs for less, no question about it. But I went for MacBook not just because it was a refreshing change from my work PC, but because I perceived the brand to be associated with a given level of quality.

My impression of the Apple quality has since changed, for the worse. Even though my MacBook was bought over 6 months after the first release, it has experienced pretty much all of the problems known to have existed on the original MacBook line (just trust me, I won’t bore you with the known issue list). And still, my warranty was only one year - so here I am 15 months later footing the bill on repairs to a MacBook that isn’t even that old. It’s one thing to pay a premium for quality; it’s another thing to have to start re-investing in a “quality” laptop at the 15-month mark when the only thing I’ve used this machine for is email and Internet! First it was the discoloration on the palm rest area; supposedly Apple would replace laptops experiencing this but only in extreme cases - since mine is not extreme, I guess I just get to enjoy the gray smudges all over the white palm rests that can’t be washed off. Then it was a battery issue; the laptop started acting inconsistently when it came to the batter and the power cord; sometimes the power cord seemed not to be recognized and sometimes the laptop would suddenly have less battery left that it should have. Try proving something like that to an Apple technician. Also, the DVD player is more picky than your average player and won’t play CD’s that play fine in other players. Naturally, the flat-line failures waited until the warranty was expired: instead of the battery only sometimes dying quickly, the thing stopped being recognized by the laptop at all. And instead of the power cable sometimes not being able to charge the battery, the power cord stopped being recognized at all! At this point, I’m just waiting for the next thing on this machine to break.

I’ve seen the new MacBook Air, and it looks like a product I would really enjoy. I would even be a potential consumer if it weren’t for the experiences I’ve had with my MacBook. The only advice I would give to those considering a MacBook Air is this: don’t just wait for the first production line to have sold out, wait until the second renovated model is released - unless you want to pay a lot of money for a product that probably never should have left the beta phase. If my MacBook is any indication, that is.