[Daniel] Disappointment

You might be wondering, if you saw the page within the last couple days, "Where are the iBook pictures?". After all, Daniel said he received it yesterday. And I did.



The iBook is perfect. It's quick (OS X looks and runs beautifully on it), the DVD/CD-RW works exactly as expected, the Airport Extreme is good and the 640Mb of RAM really help. I guess it's a shame then...



THE GRAPHICS CARD DOESN'T WORK!!!



Oh, yes, quite right, the wonderful (cough) ATi Mobility Radeon 9200, the PRIMARY REASON I BOUGHT THIS, does not cooperate with ANYTHING related to OpenGL. That means no Quake 3, no Tony Hawk Pro Skater 4, no Chess, no iTunes visualization and no 3D programming/mapping for me! Starting an OpenGL app causes the entire computer to lock hard (no force-quit, nothing) after ~10 seconds of operation, requiring a reboot of the entire computer. Patching all of the software up to current (10.3.3, Security Updates, etc.) yielded nothing. Running the Hardware Test CD (as instructed by the AppleCare Tech) as yielded nothing. AND REINSTALLING THE ENTIRE OPERATING SYSTEM, ALONG WITH A CLEAN WIPE OF THE DRIVE, YIELDED NOTHING!!!.



So here I sit, looking like a complete moron to all of my friends, my family, the world. The laptop I saved so long (~12-14 months) failed in the first 20 minutes of operation (when I first tried Chess). The Apple product line(s) that I have backed, supported and essentially pimped to everyone that would listen, failed almost immediately. There are no words to describe my disappointment, my anger, my frustration and most of all, my sadness.



To their credit, Apple is sending me a box to ship the iBook back in, free of charge to me. They're going to conduct a repair on it (after giving me a choice of repairing it or replacing it with a brand new identical model), free of charge to me. And they're going to ship it back to me once it's working, again free of charge to me. It's too bad they can't replace the credibility I used to have.



Here's to an extra 7-10 days wait. I guess I'll be here, waiting for the next big letdown.