Saturday, 21/6 Got a great idea from the iBook email mailing list today. Instead of buying a specialised iBook sleeve, I bought a padded envelope from the local magazine store. Total cost : RM5.90 (US$1.55). It protects the iBook nicely and should last a while, too.

After dinner, I finally bought the Kenneth Cole Reaction messenger bag I was eyeing. At 20% off, it was a good deal, I think. The bag is big and roomy, plenty of space to put my things. It's not designed to carry a notebook (there's no padded compartment), so I have to buy a sleeve sometime. A happy time for me, but not for my pocket. I'm definitely a bag addict by now. Just a few months ago I bought a Hedgren backpack. It's quite big, and doesn't look geeky. Lots of pockets and even a compartment for CD/MP3 player plus a pass-through slot for headphones. Definitely cool. While my iBook was under repair, I looked through my collection of bags. There's a sling bag I bought a couple of years ago, still very good condition. And a nice document bag that I got free from DiGi when I bought a phone from them, also a while ago. Still miss my Land's End attache that I bought during my last year in university. That bag lasted me over 5 years, until it was stolen. I did manage to get it back, but by that time it was soaking wet, and torn and dirty. And it just didn't feel right to hold on to it. The closest thing I got to that bag was a document bag that I bought during my visit to Seattle in early 2000. Nicely padded, not too many pockets, just nice size for the iBook. Only cost me $10, on clearance.

I finally managed to get full use of my Airzed account. While the download speeds aren't as good as the Timezone hotspots, Airzed has hotspots everywhere, including near my neighbourhood. Later on Thursday, after a meeting and while waiting for my wife to meet me for dinner, I could squeeze in about half an hour of surfing time. And I enjoyed free coffee and cheesecake, too : the RM39.90 3 month plan included a RM10 voucher for San Francisco coffee.

Living without my iBook

The following narrative was written after everything happened. The names of the Apple centre, Apple service centre and related personnel have been changed to protect the helpful :-) ------- It's a strange feeling to be without my iBook. For 14 months it has been my companion, carried almost everywhere possible - to work, to cafes. On Saturday (7/6), the iBook refused to turn on. The few times I managed to switch it on, I was greeted immediately by a dialogue box telling me to shut down. On Sunday (8/6), tried to send to Applecentre at ABC Mall. I arrived at 11.30 am. They open at 12 noon on Sundays! When I came back later in the evening, turns out their resident technician doesn't work on Sunday. Monday (9/6). Sent the iBook in. Had to wait awhile as the technician (John) was out on lunch. This was at 12 noon. The store opens at 11.30 and he goes out to lunch half and hour later! I had to wait another hour. Finally I managed to send it in for repairs. He took out my Airport card but decided to leave the 256MB RAM in. Inspection charge (once they have determined the fault, and if I decided not to repair) would run to RM100 ($25). According to John, they will let me know the status on Wednesday. Three whole workdays without my iBook. How will I cope? As these things happen, it has been a while since I backed up the iBook. Probably a month (or more) of work was possibly lost. Plus, I had just signed up for a 3-month wireless hotspot account with Airzed. Wednesday (11/6). Waited for the call. No call came. At 3pm, I decide to call them. Guess what? John was at lunch again. I called again at 4pm. Bad news : the motherboard was fried, it needed to be replaced. Cost of parts : approx RM1900 ($500). Cost of labour : yet to be determined. That's over 1/3 of what I originally bought the iBook for. When I bought it, I expected the iBook to last me a good three to four years. I tried to haggle for a lower price. No go. My choice was : pay for the repairs, or just forget it and pay for the inspection charge. Where would I get a replacement motherboard on my own? And who would install it for me? The cost of repair was clearly exorbitant, and I could not afford it. Might as well buy a new notebook. Not that I could afford that, either. Then I remembered Applecare. I had been meaning to buy it before my 1st year warranty period expired. The date came and gone. After a year of no problems, I expected to see more of the same for the next 2 to 3 years. "What if," I asked John, "if I had Applecare? Would I have to pay for the repairs then?" The answer was no. "If I buy Applecare from you right now, would you repair it free of charge?" Yes, but he would have to check whether I was eligible. I knew technically that I was no longer eligible. John asked for a copy of my original receipt. I was at the office at the time, so I rushed home and dug it out. Came back to the office and faxed me over. He said he would call me tomorrow and let me know. How much for Applecare again? RM948 ($249). Still quite a large amount to fork out, but only half of what I would have to pay without the warranty. And I was protected for a further 2 years. Thursday, 12/6 5pm Received a call from Kenny of XX Technology. They are an Apple service centre; John referred my case to them. Good news : He could sell me the Applecare and repair my iBook. It would take a day for them to receive the parts from Singapore, and a couple of days to repair. If all goes well, I'd get my iBook back by Wednesday. By Wednesday, I would have been without my iBook for just over a week. In the meantime, I would have to borrow my colleague's desktop PC for work. Arrgh! I also had to depend on my Zire 71 and GPRS-enabled handphone to keep connected. So when could I come in and pay for the Applecare, he asked. I looked at my watch. It was 5.15. What time do you close? 6pm. I said I'd be there in 20 minutes. Got to my car, took the highway to XX's office and was there in 18 minutes. They were surprised I got there so fast. So, here I was, out of pocket almost a thousand ringgit, and still a week to wait for my iBook. Tuesday, 17/6 Couldn't wait any longer. Called XX Technology in the morning, 9.30 am. My iBook is ready! Why couldn't they have called me? So when can I pick it up? It's no longer there; they've shipped it back to the Applecentre. I call back Applecentre. John's not there. I gave them my service number, they said they'd call me right back. In the meantime, I had a meeting at 11am, halfway across town. 10.55 am. Applecentre called me up. The iBook is ready for collection. Why couldn't they have called me half an hour earlier! Too late to turn back. By the time I got there, turns out the meeting was postponed to later in the afternoon. Got a call from my wife, asking me to go out for lunch. Hmmm, her office is halfway to the Mall. How about we have lunch there? It's a deal. Arrived at the Applecentre just a little after one. My iBook was in one piece. All the data was still intact! No payment necessary. They popped in my Airport card and that worked flawlessly, too. Wednesday, 18/6 I did several scans of my hard drive with the Techtool deluxe CD that I got with the Applecare package. There's definitely a problem with the drive, but each time I tried to repair it would hang. Decide to wipe the drive clean, and start again. The last time I did this was a month after I got the iBook, which was to partition the drive. Spent almost the whole night backing things up. Before, my configuration was : Partition 1 : 15GB, Mac OS X Partition 2 : 2GB, Mac OS 9 Partition 3 : 1.5GB, Scratch But it turned out I hardly ever used Mac OS 9, except to play Apeiron and Warcraft III. My Mac OS X partition had less than 1GB left, and the Scratch partition was full as well. The new configuration : Partition 1 : 16GB, Mac OS X Partition 2 : 2.6GB, Scratch By the time I backed everything up, and reinstalled Mac OS X 10.1, it was almost four in the morning. Time to go back to bed. Thursday, 19/6/03 Busy day, juggling paperwork, calls, meetings and restoring my iBook! Installed Jaguar, and the following software : From Apple : mac os x 10.2.6 update le 5.2.3 airport 3.0.5 quicktime 6.3 / 3gpp security update 2003-06-09 2.0 ical 1.0.2 itunes 4.0.1 bluetooth 1.2.1 dvd player update lphoto 2.0 safari 0.74 java 1.4.1 imovie 3.0.3 From my .mac account : virex 7.2.1 backup 1.2 / 1.2.1 For my Palm Zire 71: palm desktop 4.1 documents to go 5.004 isync 1.1 isync palm conduit 1.1 handstory (converts text and picture to Palm format) Other 3rd party applications : vlc 0.5.3 (VCD & DivX player) toast titanium 5.2 / 5.2.1 adobe reader 6.0 stuffit expander 7.0 office v.x sr1 keynote 1.1 yahoo messenger 2.5 msn 3.5 windows media player realone player delocalizer (remove foreign language packs. I remembered to skip the language packs while installing Mac OS X 10.1, but forgot all about it when installing the Jaguar update. Delocalizer saved me over 500MB of space) I have yet to install these applications : mozilla 1.4 rc2 appleworks 6.2.7 I will probably install Mozilla once it reaches 1.4 proper. What made me impressed was, when I copied over my backup up preference files, everything worked as it did before. I now have roughly 10.5 GB space free. My iTunes Library is now half the size, since I was more careful in choosing what to keep. All in all, it's good to have the iBook back.