Way to go, MacBook "Pro"

Brace yourself -- just over a week ago, the hard drive in my brand new MacBook Pro crashed. That's right. This isn't a prank.

Just under two months ago, I jumped on the Apple bandwagon for the first time ever and made "the switch" after being a PC user for over 10 years. I wasn't a newbie to Apple and their slick machines -- I owned a 12" PowerBook G4 for a year in 2004. So I was (and am) aware of the several ways in which Apple's OS X is better than Windows.

Aside from being overly user-friendly, Macs are primarily known for their stability and reliability. In fact, one can see in several places on Apple's website the various references to how unstable PC's are. So you can imagine my surprise when my MacBook Pro (supposedly Apple's greatest computer to date) died on me. It just died. I didn't ever drop it and it was never subjected to extreme temperatures. The piece-of-crap hard drive just crashed out of the blue.

It would be a flat-out lie if I were to say that I was extremely upset. I'm fairly good at understanding that very little of life is under my complete control. I was a tad disappointed, though. It's a good thing Apple has amazing customer service. I set up an appointment to see a "Mac Genius" at the Apple store. When I got there, he seemed genuinely surprised and told me that this is the first case in which he has witnessed a MacBook Pro crash. He filled out a work order and kept the laptop to ship out. They overnighted it to a service center and I received an e-mail with a link that points to a page that has the repair's status. I was ecstatic that things were moving along quickly and smoothly.

And then it got worse -- five days ago (on 02 August) the repair status slinked into "on hold" due to a pending order for a critical part.

I didn't think this would bother me so much, but I'm beginning to have separation anxiety. I can only hope that they receive this "part" soon and ship me my laptop back.

I'm very happy that I made the decision to purchase the very *expensive* MacBook Pro. However, if you're considering making "the switch" because Macs are so much more reliable -- think again and think carefully before spending so much money. Macs may be more stable than PC's, but they're not invincible.