I’m going to want a new laptop in a while and I’ve been seriously considering switching back to a Mac. I used Mac’s exclusively for years until OS 9 and its intolerable instability. I’ve been using Windows ever since, both on my laptops and on my server.
After reading multiple horror stories in the blogosphere about MacBook failures, I’m going to run as fast as I can back to IBM/Lenovo for another ThinkPad. Liz Gannes account of her experience at the Palo Alto Apple Store was the tipping point for me.
My ThinkPad T42p came with a three-year, next business day, on-site warranty. I’ve had to use the warranty service three times: twice for a trackpad replacement (the trackpad hadn’t failed, it was just not as crisp as when new) and once for a fan replacement (IBM’s elegant design calls for the system to refuse to boot if the fan test fails, mitigating heat damage). That may sound like a lot of repair calls, but only one was work-stopping. And my laptops take a hell of a beating—extreme temperature changes, rough handling, non-stop uptimes, lots of moving before the laptop finishes going into its sleep cycle, etc.
Each time IBM sent a technician (my T42p is one of the last IBM ThinkPads, and IBM continues to service the warranties on Lenovo ThinkPads) on-site to wherever I happened to be located at the time. The tech was courteous and efficient and out of my hair within an hour.
What do you get with Apple? A minimum of a week without your laptop for starters. Then arrogance and rudeness to top it all off. Oh, and then reports indicate that the repairs may not fix the problem. Old Apple fans insist on waiting for the second revision of new products, and this is why.
Apple currently designs great products. This is a case where it didn’t. The company can be forgiven for that—shit happens—but not for its hubris.
0 responses. Comments closed for this article.