Ok. Looks like I am turning into an all out Apple guy. A little more than a week ago I made the switch from my PC to a Mac. I got my new iMac and have had a wonderful week with it. I have been blown away by the speed, the smoothness of operations and the various things that I now could do to make my business process more efficient by using my iMac and my iPhone in tandem.
This morning , my 3 year old HP Pavilion DV2000 died on me. The past few weeks, it was heating up and switching off randomly. I knew the end was near. But finally, this morning when I tried to boot it up, it made one long beep, two short beeps and even though all the lights were on and I could hear the fan the monitor did not turn on. I researched a little to realize that the mother board could have fried. There were reports of this happening because the NVIDIA graphics cards heated up and fried itself and the motherboard.
Anyway, I think it is ridiculous that “laptops” have ventilators and fans on the bottom which means that you can not keep them in your laps (they could scorch your thighs) or put them on a bed and work. They heat up because they do not get enough ventilation. I mean what kind if idiots design these things? Don’t they realize they are “laptops” and need to stay cool and have perhaps side ventilation to enable one to keep them on any surface and work?
So, I called HP to get a quote for the motherboard. Because I was out of warranty, I was redirected to a 3rd party vendor who quoted it at $335 / £210 and during the conversation, the agent said that in situations like this, not only the motherboard but the inverter and the RAM could also be fried. He went on to suggest that I get an Acer Laptop for $650 / £400 instead and that I would better off. So that got me thinking. Instead of shelling out $650 / £400 and getting a shitty laptop again, perhaps I could invest a little more and get the 13″ MacBook Pro. This would work well for my entertainment and internet purposes and would also be useful to high school daughter to whom I had promised a MacBook quite some time back. She wanted a Mac for the video editing capabilities.
Nothing has been decided yet but I will let you know in a day or two if I have secured the MacBook. After working on the iMac for more than a week, I can not think of using a PC Laptop!
Update: 25/07/09 – I have decided that my budget for this month has probably been stretched to the limit with the ne iMac, so I will be postponing the purchase of a new laptop till next month.
