As a baby in a carriage, my mother would get an ice cream treat and share it with me. I thought ice cream was pure god food. I know this because when I see a picture of an old time Good Humor ice cream truck, my most primitive consciousness experiences it as a miracle that’s about to happen. #
My inner-infant delights, pure ecstasy, immortality! #
100 percent unadulterated love. ā¤ļø#
How I felt pure love as an infant.
Scripting News Annex 
Posted by Ray Booysen on August 31, 2006 at 7:44 am
Thats if you can afford to buy a new one. š
Posted by Dave Winer on August 31, 2006 at 7:48 am
I know! Believe me. It’s ridiculous.
Now I have three PC laptops and they all work.
Too bad they all run Windows and not the Mac OS. š¦
Posted by Em on August 31, 2006 at 7:51 am
You know, I don’t know that I would blame Apple for the “flaming” batteries. Those were made by Sony.
Posted by Ryan on August 31, 2006 at 7:55 am
The laptop issue is ridiculous. It’s good you pointed to the Apple problems because they are supposed to be different and better. Repeated returns are also an issue with Dell as well as documented in the blogosphere.
The system is broken, totally broken. If a laptop arrives busted immediately after purcahse you can dispute the credit card charge but later on under warranty the consumer has virtually no leverage because the cost of a lawsuit is prohibitive.
What I want is a company to sit between me and the skeevy laptop maker (Apple or Dell or whoever). The company will month-to-month lease me a laptop, all service included in the price including if I drop it (so the service policy is “no questions asked”), and at any time if I am not happy with the unit or their service I simply return the thing and stop paying laptop rent.
This way the incentives are right. The incentive no longer will be to f*ck with the customer and waste his time with runarounds until the warranty runs out and shuffle off the support calls to India.
And yes I’d pay a premium (say 50%) for this. And other people would too. You know they would because they regularly buy gold plated $300 premium warranties on $1500 laptops, and they STILL get futzed with.
By the way, I’m talking about a real lease, not a payment plan for people without credit cards. The key is that it’s month-to-month and you can return the laptop at any time.
Posted by heavyboots on August 31, 2006 at 10:07 am
Re: hardware vs software malfunctions
Dave, the difference is who dropped the ball and what you need to do to fix it. Reinstalling the OS over and over on b0rked hardware will get you nowhere but more frustrated. Likewise, demanding a whole new computer won’t stop a persistent kernel panic if it’s caused by a software issue (eg, copying 1,000’s of tiny files in 10.3.0 Appletalk). Only after you correctly diagnose what’s broken can you get on the road to fixing it.
I guess my point is that you seem to being attacking the “Macs don’t crash” statement as though it’s this huge myth. Which prompts lots of us out here who manage large installations of them to write in yet again saying it’s not that huge a myth because we’ve got lots and lots of stable ones that only KP every couple months or sometimes not for *years*, even under heavy usage. Then we all ask you if you’ve checked for hardware problems, and now that you have and have verified the mobo is an issue, you’re on the road to getting it fixed! Yay! š
Posted by Diego Barros on August 31, 2006 at 4:27 pm
So are you taking yours back? Any feedback from them how long until you get yours back?
Posted by Dave Winer on August 31, 2006 at 4:35 pm
Diego, nope — like I said, if I had to give it up for a month I’d have to buy another computer. And if I did, at this point, it wouldn’t be a Mac. I’ve had three Macs in the last year, and all three have had crashing problems. Chalk it up to bad hardware karma, or whatever..
Posted by Diego Barros on August 31, 2006 at 6:35 pm
Dave, talking about Mac karma. Here’s a group of four people who bought news Macs and all had troubles:
http://www.zdnet.com.au/blogs/securifythis/soa/Is_Apple_s_MacBook_rotten_to_the_core_/
Now that’s bad luck with all four of these people having problems. Talk about odds! š
Posted by Joel on August 31, 2006 at 7:47 pm
Hope to see you here:
9/11 Truth Event
Sunday, September 24, 7:00 PM
Berkeley, CA
RAY McGOVERN, host
DAVID RAY GRIFFIN
PETER DALE SCOTT
PETER PHILLIPS
KEVIN RYAN
http://www.kpfa.org/events/index.php?#729
Posted by RetiredMidn on August 31, 2006 at 7:57 pm
Raising my hand (about President Bush’s statements). Now what?