TechWire

Apple after-sales service: let the fun begin

An impending nightmare with my week-old Apple MacBook looms.

The right side of my spacebar isn’t working. This is a bit frustrating since I’m right-handed.

The thing is, I bought the laptop in an Apple Store in the US. Everyone from the head of Apple Ireland to sales reps in Irish Apple retailers to the sales clerk in the Chicago Apple Store said that there was a global warranty.

I’ve just called Apple support here in Ireland: they said it’s not their problem. They told me to call the Apple Store in Chicago. As I write, that store is closed. I’ve a feeling when I call them that they’re going to tell me that it’s not their problem either, since I’m in a different country to the one I bought it in.

Should be interesting to see how this pans out…

Why Boot Camp is a bitch to install

When I picked up my shiny new MacBook last week -- for €300 cheaper in the US than here (€950 there as opposed to €1,250 here) -- I eagerly set about exploring the new features of its new operating system, Leopard. One of these features is Boot Camp, a program which lets you put Windows on the computer, should you want to run regular business software or games (for all its multimedia elegance, the Mac is still poor in these categories). After about five hours of freezes, restarts and forced shut-downs, I'm beginning to wonder why I bothered. The version of Windows I put in is Windows XP Pro, previously unused. Installing it has been a real trial. The first problem is that the MacBook's DVD drive is very, very sensitive. If I shift position with the computer on my lap, the drive starts to sputter and complain, pausing installation. The next problem was that it started to freeze just as it was about to finish installation. No forced-shutdown command would work, so I had to revert to the old reliable method of physically taking out the battery and putting it back in just to shut the computer down. Hardly the stuff of 21st century computing. This happened several times until I just let the battery run out by itself to see if that would work. Bizarrely, it did. When I turned the machine on again, it booted into Windows XP. Hallelujah, I thought. I went through some of the functions to make sure it was working. I then shut the computer down and switched on to get back to Apple's OS X operating system. But no -- the MacBook did not want to let me do that. As I write, my MacBook now boots into Windows XP as a a default every time I turn it on, which isn't exactly thrilling as I could have just bought a €500 Dell had I wanted that. (The only way of getting to Apple's operating system appears to be holding the 'option' key down when you press the power button -- this gives you the choice of either operating system.) There is a software program called Parallels which, apparently, lets you run both operating systems side by side. I may resort to shelling out €75 for that. But it's a shame -- I had thought Boot Camp was supposed to do the job.

Is this the ugliest new PC on the market?

Lenovo's Thinkcentre M57 is a stellar performer, no doubt, but ugh...

HP's rockin' new PCs

Am in New York City for a couple of days at HP's Autumn product launch. Here's a quick synopsis.

THE GOOD
HP's new Touchsmart PC (left): here's a PC that can be controlled by touching the screen. Your finger does pretty much anything a mouse will do. (It also has a keyboard and mouse, though.) It's perfect for kids (can be wiped down with any ordinary household cleaner) while packing in a lot of power into a 19 inch screen.
The new Voodoo Blackbird 002 gaming PC (above, right): very, very impressive. Not only does it pack the maximum firepower, it eschews a lot of propietary hardware in facour of letting the user fit it with his graphics card or hard drive of choice. And it's easy peasy to take it apart and put it back together again. The star of the show, in my view.

THE AVERAGE
Five new iPaq PDAs/smartphones: one's a sat nav device, two are HSDPA-equipped smartphones and two are standard Windows PDAs. Boring! Next!

THE BAD
'The computer is pesonal again' theme: no, it's not. It's still just a laptop or a desktop PC. Nothing on display here would want you to form any deeper of a personal bond with your Ram+hard-drive+Windows machine. Because that's what they are, regardless of a splash of red applied to the side of a keyboard.

The case for Google building a PC

Is Google building a PC? Is that the logical end to its current expansion?
Think about it. It has loads of cash. It's been creating loads of PC software tools to rival Microsoft, a company it's at war with (see Damien's post about dumping Microsoft and using Google docs). And now it's ramping up its involvement (or maybe technology exchanges?) with hardware manufacturers such as Apple. So why not make a low cost computer itself? It, uniquely, has the positive brand power to do it.
The €399 G-Mac? Or even the 'GC'?

ps I know that this has been speculated on before. But the timing seems better now.

Guardian hack: 'I hate Macs'

This Guardian journalist hates Macs and he's not afraid to go for the jugular. I disagree with a lot of what he says, though he does have something of a point about customisation.

PC World finally pulls plug on floppy disks

It's official: floppy disks are yesterday's technology. If you haven't left your house since 1997, PC World's announcement today (below) might come as a shock:

PC World, Europe's leading chain of computing superstores announces today that it will no longer stock floppy disks once existing stock has been sold in all its stores, including the 12 PC World stores in Ireland, located in Dublin, Galway, Limerick, Waterford, Dundalk, Sligo, Naas, Navan and Cork.
The floppy disk, capable of storing 1.44 megabytes of data, is now no longer adequate for most day to day computing requirements.

See you in 2017

In business, confidence is a key asset. And Microsoft clearly has plenty. In the specifications for its Windows Vista Business and Enterprise editions, it has named the day when its support for these products will run out: April 11th, 2017. Must be nice to be so sure you'll be around in 10 years.

No Macs for under €1,000

Apple has raised the entry-level price of its desktop computers to €1,020. It means that the cheapest Mac is now over twice the price of the cheapest PC. The price hike is due to the incorporation of Intel dual core chips.

Price of an ordinary computer falls below €400 in Ireland

Dell’s standard Dimension 1100 PC has fallen in price to €380 (including Vat and delivery), setting a new industry benchmark for the price of an entry-level computer. The machine comes with an 80GB hard drive, a 2.5Ghz Intel Celeron processor and 512MB of Ram, specifications which would have been considered medium to high end two or three years ago. Where it skimps is not having a DVD burning drive (though it plays them fine) and an old-fashioned boxy CRT monitor instead of a flat panel one. Available on dell.ie/deals.