It was night time. I was sitting in the kitchen working on my new laptop. Di and Alex eventually came in and we started chatting.
We were having a good time and at some point, I pulled up my music player, cranked up the volume and we were singing the Elephant Love Medley from Moulin Rouge
“Love lifts us up where we belong!” we bellowed. “Where the eagles fly! On a mountain high!”
With ten seconds to the end of the song, the music got stuck. The laptop sat there, blaring out one loud and terrible note.
“Aargh!” We blocked our ears. “Turn it off!”
I tried to exit the program. Click, click, click. The exit cross didn’t work.
Control, Alt, Delete. Nothing popped up.
“Try the external volume control! There must be a mute button!”
I found it eventually and pressed the keys but the screeching wouldn’t stop.
“Turn it off! Press the power button!”
I held the power button for five seconds and finally, the blaring stopped.
I waited a couple of seconds before I pressed the power button again. The computer woke up and scrolled through the set-up. It got to the screen that told me that Windows hadn’t shut down properly and I should probably try safe mode.
Well, I tried safe mode, and I tried ‘Previous settings known to work’, and I tried ‘Start Windows normally’. With every option, the computer paused then flashed me the Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) for half a second before it reset. I didn’t even have time to see what the messages were. Something about ‘unmountable partition’.
The computer was stuck in a reset loop.
Alex forced the computer off. “Let it rest,” he said, hopefully. “Sometimes computers just need to rest.”
I looked at him and Di, stricken. I had a month’s work on the computer and all my photos since arriving.
“I’ll wash the dishes,” I mumbled. “Washing dishes will make me feel better.”
I put on the yellow gloves and started scrubbing at the charred rice stuck in the rice pot. I moved onto the saucepan, working at the egg and tomato residue. Behind me, I heard Alex boot up the computer again. I kept scrubbing and scrubbing, all the while, listening to the whirr of my laptop. I turned around to look at him when the whir stopped.
“Nothing?”
He shook his head sadly. “Do you have a recovery CD? If it’s just a problem with the hard drive, we can start it up again. But… I think it will format your computer.”
I bit my lip and was silent for a minute.
Di said, “You can try and rescue the hard disk with the computer service tomorrow. Or wait until morning. Maybe it needs more time.”
I looked down at my feet. Di and Alex looked on in sympathetic silence.
“It’s really just my photos,” I said slowly. “I had some work on it but nothing that I can’t recreate in a day. But my photos… There are copies on the internet but they’re small.”
I wrung my hands and thought about all the time I had spent on setting up the computer and all the work I needed to do. I really didn’t have time to get my computer fixed.
“I’ll get my recovery CD,” I decided. “I just want to know that it’ll be all right.”
I got the CD and handed it to Alex. I sat down next to him as he loaded it up.
WARNING: Your hard disk will be completely erased. Do you really want to continue?
It almost made me cry. Or maybe it was laugh.
“Are you sure?” Alex asked.
“Yes. Do it. Press OK.”
“I’m not pressing it! You have to, Joan.”
I gritted my teeth, reached over and pressed the button.
OH DEAR, JOANNN!!!!
*hug*
why dun you switch to a mac next time? =P
I did consider it, serendipity, but the price premium was a bit much for me to stomach. I’m also quite attached to the two-button mouse 🙂
In related news, though, there are two people in my house with Macs and they’ve both broken down. Many people I know with an iPod have had trouble with it too. It seems that Macs might be stable software-wise but their hardware reliability needs some work… true?
Hey Joan,
You probably could have still recovered your photos but I assume you didn’t have time to go through all the hassle?
I wasn’t going to comment before, but since the subject of macs did come up I finally have an excuse to do my rant 🙂
Stability wise I personally think the software side is quite stable, but not invulnerable. iTunes 7 had lots of bugs when it came out. Overall I’ve had more issues with windows though, especially with spyware and viruses taken into account. Hardware wise, I remember Tam used to get issues with her ibook, and one of the iMacs in the labs seem to have recurring problems. All the other ones I know of seems to work fine. My ipod lost sound in one channel, though admittedly that was partly my fault for using chunky not very portable headphones (thanks again for your ebay help joan!), but I sent it in and they gave me a new one after a week. So personally they’ve been good with me, though I know lots of people have had lots of issues say so on the internet. A magazine said someone found it hard to get an ipod repaired, so different experiences I guess.
You can use your two button mouse on the mac. You can use any mouse/monitor on the mac. The current apple mouse has four buttons and a scroll ball that can scroll left and right as well as up and down. Its nice for zoomed up photo or doing video/audio editing. My microsoft intellimouse currently serves me quite well.
About the price premium, there’s not as much as there used to be, if at all. What I normally say is that Macs aren’t cheap, but they still are good value, especially with the education discounts. For desktop’s there’s a bit of a premium as they’re using more expensive notebook parts to keep the small form factor (*cough cough* mac mini). Comparisons with machines similarly configured to the Mac Pro found the Mac cheaper, and with notebooks where form factor is important I think the macbooks and macbook pro’s are also quite comparable. Add in OS X and the iLife suite and its really good value, how much is very very debatable 😛 And if you need to you can install windows as well.
For home/student/multimedia use I think they’re great, but I wouldn’t really recommend it for people who like games, pirating, or lots of choices/flexibility (unless you can afford the Mac pro).
You’re wishing you didn’t set me off, aren’t you? Too late!!
Carlo