That machine, while not blazing, surely is sturdy and fast, it runs modern synthesizer software, and currently my wife has it and like it. It keeps temperature down to a minimum given that I put an industrial strength fan setup in, and thus I hope it’ll keep running for the foreseeable future.

I live in RDU and have been to the Durham many times. The wait at the genius bar is a pain and they didn’t fix my problem the times I went. The good news is there is an Apple store in Raleigh now so you won’t have to go quite as far

Also, if you have Temperature Monitor, keep it on for a couple days and make sure the history is on — it will show them the spikes in temperature. And then you can go to the system.log and show them it goes to sleep at the same time.

The info plus those parts from your own machine SHOULD take care of it. They’re smart dudes…. they’ll get it.

Sure enough I got a voicemail 5 days after I dropped it off that they have to send it in to Apple (duh!), they think the mainboard needs to be replaced (TOPCASE TOPCASE TOPCASE!) and they want to ask me some questions (I send them a 4 page document with every detail they could need). Of course I dropped it off before going on vacation for 10 days so they would hopefully send it in to Apple and maybe get it completed in a reasonable amount of time.

Of course that’s impossible when you have 7 or 8 middlemen muddling everything.

Paul: I wish other’s repair experiences had been like yours. Perhaps you live very close to a repair center. Most don’t, however (reference Brian’s post right above yours — 2 weeks and he knew what he needed)… I read many of the same stories on the Apple forums as well.

And actually, the Durham store is the largest repair center in that region (or so they told me). They do have parts in stock, but they’re electonically ordered by a machine, not a human, and you can’t get something done ahead to have it there. Even if you can PROVE that’s what you need — which I had.

Tom: Lucky you to live in a big city. If I could have taken my machine in, proven my point, gotten the parts ordered and then taken it back when they were in, it would have likely been a similar story to yours. (and yes, mine’s free as well)

Sara: I do have my “stuff” on back up — you can bet your bippy. But the computers I have available to RUN the back up are old — and difficult to work on. Would that I were a big company and had a myriad of laptops lying around for my finger’s pleasure. But for now, that’s not to be.

And 48 hours shouldn’t be a big deal (according to Apple) — that’s why I paid for ProCare ($100 to have a guarantee of priority service — usually 24 hours) … if they had ordered the part when I made the appointment — and I had a myriad of data proving that’s what I needed) — then I could have dropped the PB off and had it back in 48. I frankly don’t believe that’s too much to ask. Is the service on a faulty part they gave me to be done at MY convenience or THEIR convenience. I would hold that everything should be done to make it easier on the customer (they call that customer service)… but evidently, Apple no longer believes that.

Gabe: I do understand that most people that call in to customer service probably need to plug the machine in. But when the customer has literally documented, by emails from others with the same issue, blogs and Apple threads, the exact issue and the exact fix — yes, there should be a way to escalate and take care of it. I did a lot of work to get it figured out so I wouldn’t have my machine sit for 10 days to 3 weeks (as happened to others with this problem since Apple seemed to never have heard of it and denied it existed — even sending some machines back after all that time unrepaired)…

So my hope was to put it on a platter for them… help them help us if that makes sense… I guess I thought that would make them want to help me as well…

< shrug / >

So would it be reasonable for Apple to trust their customers opinions about problems? Don’t get me wrong, they should have a way for power users to get escalated to someone who actually knows what they’re talking about, but I’m afraid support manuals and canned responses are really the best frontline support.

You sound smart and able to cope with the fix you’re in. But, you expect too much of this company and its employees, at whatever size and level of bureaucracy. You need to spend some dough on a second computer if all your data is so gosh-darned important and you need access to it 24-7. And on backup drives. And on high-capacity portable storage.

You have to be responsible for your own data and your own computers. Apple has a responsibility to fix these thousands-of-parts, quirky, high-performance machines in a reasonable amount of time, and it sounds like they made all reasonable efforts to do so. Your 48-hours-where-and-when-I-please-or-the-whole-thing’s-off demands are not reasonable. They’re crazy-talk.

Let us know how it turns out — I hope you get the computer fixed and that it all works properly when done!

even so, i would still send it out to get repaired. 99% of the time, they have a 72-hour turnaround — mail it monday, get it back wednesday. they, of course, don’t guarantee it’s that fast, but it pretty much always is, unless there’s some sort of backorder.

if you call on monday, you get the box tuesday, and get it back thursday. (or, go to the store monday, drop it off, and get it back wednesday.)

and, unlike the store, they have parts in stock because they’re the darn repair depot.

my repair experiences with my powerbooks have been very positive.