I am ashamed to say that I bit the bullet and went to the Ginza Store’s Genius Bar and dropped my MacBook for repairs. But let me explain why I changed my mind…

See, I was typing up an email on Saturday morning on the Macbook (because I had to use a special mail account which was not configured on the TiBook), and one of the keycap stayed on my finger…

Now, I do not think I’m a mad typist by any stretch. But it’s the second time this keycap popped out in a month (it’s the “a” key, for those interested…) ! First time, I went to the Apple Store, screamed quite a bit when a a “Genius” said that they do not have spare keycaps for MacBooks and that I needed to send the machine for a top-case replacement, and finally another Genius overheard (well, you’d have to see me when I am upset, let’s say they could probably hear me two floors up) us and went to get a keycap from a unit on which they performed a”US conversion”. (that’s right, in Japan, when you ask for a US keyboard, they use a Japanese keyboard, pop all keys off and clip a US keyboard in its place)

All was well (as far as the keyboard is concerned) until last Saturday when I thought “enough is enough !”, so I used my girlfriend’s white MacBook (which has NO PROBLEM WHATSOEVER) to schedule an appointment at the Genius Bar.

Saturday evening, 19:00, we are waiting, sitting at said Genius Bar. 5 customers, 10 more on the schedule list, and one Genius. Great.

10 minutes later, my name is called, and I explain that I had enough with all this crap, and I want a new machine right now. (hey, you gotta try, right?) The guy politely says it’s not possible, and asks me what the problem is. Duh, look at the keyboard, pal… Then, I said the magic words : “and the machine suddenly shuts down at random”. Not the least surprised, the Genius, replies : “OK, let’s send it for repairs. They might change the Logic Board and the heatsink assembly”.

The Genius start typing away the repair note and we start to discuss :

- “So, how many MacBooks have you seen with this problem?”
- “Uhm, honestly, we do not count.”
- “Right. Do you know what’s the problem ?”
- “Not really. Some people get the heatsink changed and they have no more problems.”
- “… so the problem comes from overheating ?”
- “I don’t know.”

Then he was done, I just had to sign an authorisation for the repair center to wipe out my hard drive (I had wiped-out my hard drive and restored the system from the DVD that came with the MacBook) and I was on my way. It’s going to take “5 to 7 days”. But I can check the status of the repairs on the web.

I’m not too hopeful the logic board change will make any difference with the random shutdowns, but at least I’ll have a brand new topcase…

to be continued…

This entry was posted on Monday, September 4th, 2006 at 02:09 CEST and is filed under Apple talk, Rants & Raves. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.