The northlondonhippy

Hey ho hippyfans!

Sorry for the longer than usual gap in posts. I’d love to blame it on some­thing as excit­ing as a trip to a desert island, or a drug-induced coma, but sadly the truth is more mun­dane than that.

My iMac has been in the shop for the last few days, though thanks to my iBook, I’ve still been online.

So if I’ve still been online, why haven’t I posted?

Sim­ple, I’ve been suf­fer­ing from tech-stress!

In the last 3 weeks, all of my major Apple gad­gets have suf­fered from some sort of prob­lem or issue. They are all resolved now, so my tech-stress lev­els are return­ing to normal.

Before any­one thinks this is going to be some sort of anti-Apple tirade, think again. I have noth­ing but praise for how they have han­dled my tech­ni­cal troubles.

Firstly, my Black 60gb iPod with video devel­oped an odd prob­lem; when I con­nected it to my com­puter, it didn’t show up on the desk­top or in iTunes. The iPod itself worked fine for play­back, but it wouldn’t synch or charge via the dock connector.

Because my iPod is engraved, the only repair option I had was to use Apple’s col­lect and return ser­vice. All of this was under my orig­i­nal war­ranty, so it only cost me in time with­out it, but no dosh at all.

Apple sent UPS to col­lect the iPod, com­plete with all the pack­ag­ing and labels required.

The UPS guy even waited a few min­utes while I boxed it up. The next day it was back with the moth­er­ship in the Nether­lands, the prob­lem was diag­nosed and a new one was shipped out from their fac­tory in Shang­hai the day after that.

If it weren’t for the recent ter­ror alerts, I would have had the replace­ment much quicker, but as it turned out, I was with­out the iPod for 10 days. Not bad.

I’m not sure if the replace­ment is brand new or recon­di­tioned, but it cer­tainly looks and feels new. I was so impressed with the ser­vice I received that I bought the Apple Care plan to cover it for another 2 years. If some­thing else ever goes wrong with it, I know exactly what to expect.

My G5 iMac is around 18 months old and I still love it.

Around a year ago, Apple iden­ti­fied an issue with my model of iMac that involved the Logic Board and power sup­ply and extended the repair period by an addi­tional 2 years on top of their war­ranty. Last week, I realised my com­puter was suf­fer­ing from this known issue.

The fans were run­ning fast, the temp was high and hot and finally, I started get­ting dis­torted video and weird crashes. Last Wednes­day I took it into my local north Lon­don Apple Store.

I had my first ever appoint­ment with a Mac Genius and I was impressed. He checked out my iMac, booked it in for the repairs and even ordered the parts he thought might need replac­ing. It turns out, it didn’t need every­thing he sent but bet­ter safe than sorry.

On Fri­day, the online sta­tus of my repair said it was com­plete, but they didn’t phone me. I was really miss­ing it, so today (Mon­day) I went in to col­lect it. The repair was fin­ished, but they wanted to clean it before I picked it up, so I wan­dered around for half an hour and when I returned, it was boxed up and ready to go.

It’s run­ning cooler, the fans are qui­eter and the video looks great. Also, they did an amaz­ing job of scrub­bing it up, it looks as good as it did when it was new…even the keyboard!

So again, Apple came through for me.

Now, my prob­lem with my iBook is the same one affect­ing 1.8 mil­lion other Apple lap­top own­ers, the great Sony bat­tery recall of 2006. Apple was quick to announce this and even though they haven’t had that many reported cases of over­heat­ing, they’re replac­ing all those bat­ter­ies for free!

As I was using my iBook exten­sively in the last week, while the iMac was back with the moth­er­ship being repaired, I noticed the bat­tery wasn’t hold­ing it’s charge as well as it used to and con­sid­ered order­ing a replace­ment. Now I don’t need to, as I’ve reg­is­tered for the recall and should receive a new bat­tery for it in the next month or so.

Again, I’m pleased with the outcome.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s stress­ful when your essen­tial toys go funny and I’ve been miss­ing my iMac like mad.

I was able to back-up all my impor­tant data; the ele­ments of my all new dig­i­tal lifestyle, before I took it into the shop, but it’s still never easy to part with your computer.

I’m glued to my screen most of the time, when I’m home. If I’m not writ­ing, or surf­ing the net, I’m using it to waste time with music and video. I’m attached, addicted, what­ever you want to call it. I’m glad it’s home, where it belongs.

I want a black Mac­Book and am going to get one at some point in the not too dis­tant future.

I’ve offered Mrs. Hippy the iBook, which is only a year old and pris­tine con­di­tion and if she passes, I’ll sell it at a decent price. I may already know some­one who would grab it, though I would love to see Mrs. H take it. She doesn’t really get my love of all things Apple and I think it would put her on the road to under­stand­ing why they are so damn good.

I also hope to be order­ing a Mac Mini soon as there’s a refresh expected in the next fort­night, if you believe the rumour sites. I always believe the rumours; life is more fun that way.

The Mac Mini will get con­nected to my Sony Bravia and stereo and act as my media server. I’ll move all of my iTunes on to it as well as using it to down­load video from the net. I’ll also be able to receive and record some dig­i­tal ter­res­trial chan­nels on it, which will be extra cool because I can export the pro­grammes for play­back on my iPod.

And then my 2nd Air­port Express, which is cur­rently con­nected to my stereo, for stream­ing music from the iMac, will move into the kitchen, to con­nect to my brand new Log­itech mm50 (black) speak­ers, that I picked up last week. They’re rather wicked and I’m blown away by the sound!

My all-new dig­i­tal lifestyle just keeps get­ting bet­ter and bet­ter and bet­ter! And this ends what amounts to a two-handed geek-speak wank that prob­a­bly put most of you off!

Nor­mal hippy ser­vice will resume soon!