Whats with Apple Powerbook G4's CD Drive?
Kaushik and I purchased a brand new 17-inch Powerbook G4 during the Thanksgiving weekend. It's a very sleek looking gadget and is definitely bound to attract a few stares and some attention from strangers. I should say, definitely makes you feel proud, when you parade with it.
A week had only passed by, and Kaushik had bought DVD's. Unfortunately the DVD got stuck and we could not open the drive at all. Like any other geek, we tried 'google' searching for solns to resolve the situation. Looks like its a very common problem. Many users have reported the same issue and have given a few advices that they tried
Here are what we came across:
- Reboot holding the mouse button (or mouse left button if you have a multiple buttons mouse); release the button when the CD/DVD pops out
- When booting, hold down the command-option-o-f keys simultaneously
when you see a white screen screen that says “Welcome to Open Firmware", release the key combination and type in “eject cd”. After the CD emerges, type mac-boot and hit return to reboot your mac - Ejecting via iTunes
- http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=88068
- F12, or Media Eject KeyYou can press the F12 key, also known as the Media Eject key (), located at the top-right corner of the keyboard to eject a disc from the DVD-ROM drive. Press and hold down this key for a few seconds until the drive ejects the disc.
I then called up the Apple Support. They again asked me to repeat the steps mentioned above and it didn't help. I was then adviced to take the Powerbook to the Apple showroom to get it repaired/replaced.
We tried calling up the showroom to find out more details. They said the team [at Genius Bar] were always busy and only go by appointments. Fair enough! We asked for an appointment that Saturday. We were told, since we were not 'Procare' members, we can fix an appointment for Saturday only on Saturday morning and not earlier. We were also informed that, since they are usually very busy during the weekends, we may have to wake up as early as 6:30 a.m to make an appointment for that particular day. We were aghast!!!
For people like my husband, Saturday and Sunday mornings are usually a luxury and they would not wanna trade it for anything. Moreover, we spend a handsome $3000 and not even a week has passed, but facing problems with the product. When we try taking the problem to the customer support, the kinda support we received was apalling. We seriously thought, we would have been better of with a Sony laptop that is also sleek and smart looking one.
We managed to make and appointment that Saturday. The engineer at the 'Genius' Bar were very cordial and nice. They helped us to remove the DVD.
Technorati Tags: Powerbook G4, Apple Powerbook G4's CD Drive, CD drive stuck, Apple Customer Supporttech blog
posted by <$Tags Mechanic$> at
12:25 AM
7 Comments:
There are a lot of visitors routed from www.macsurfer.com To all of them 1) I did not post my article on the 'macsurfer' website 2) I blogged my experience with Apple 3)Nobody has the right to say if I can blog it or not 4) You 'google' search it and you will find 100's of entries on this topic. It so happens my blog has got listed in ur website.
By
Tags Mechanic, at 8:29 AM
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
By
Anonymous, at 11:53 AM
In response to your comment: 1) okay, 2) okay, 3) most definitely, 4) I never doubted you. From the defensiveness of your tone, I assume someone was mean to you and for this, I apologize.
I bought the Sony and now wish very, very much that I had purchased the Powerbook instead. Windows XP was the least of the horrors. I would have welcomed a mis-aligned DVD drive by contrast. The only reason the Sony didn't get launched into a wall is that a laptop was mission critical. Next time it will be a Mac.
By
Anonymous, at 11:59 AM
Hi Jim,
Well, we just had a rough time fixing up an appointment. We found it unacceptable, you pay a very high fee and you have a problem with the system you just purchased, but the customer service wasn't helping us with the appointments.
We do acknowledge that the CD problem is not a very major problem and the Genius desk were extremely cordial to us.So no regrets!
By
Tags Mechanic, at 12:03 PM
I guess my question is - what other company provides better or easier support to deal with? I had Dells for years and I'd have to ship them off after the first year of "in home" support which I never used. So that would take about 5 to 10 days without the machine at all.
Or I had a Sony and Gateway at one point and had to drive many miles to a repair tech who only wanted to keep the computer for a couple days to repair. Waking up at 6am to make an appt, then going back to bed only to go in and get the repair the same day seems pretty reasonable to me.
Yes, it's annoying, but for any technical repair the typical method is to ship it off for a fix and to me that's worse.
By
Anonymous, at 2:23 PM
hmm... That can be scary.But when I pay a premium for a product, can't I expect premium service? Infact I should tell you, the 'Apple Support Guy' offered shipment as the first option. I enquired the other possibility.
By
Tags Mechanic, at 2:33 PM
What in the world made you go4 Mac,their "Kasta" "Mar" support is legendary stuff.All that Mac does to cover their losses in Notebook and Desktop sale.is to flount their iPod Sales figures,and apart from fashion value iPod don't deserve the exorbitant cost they are sold at,there are many products with better features and at more competitive price available in Market ..best luck with your Mac-affair
By
Unsui, at 8:42 PM
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