PSA: Notebooks do NOT have disc changers in them!

[laptop-mechanic.livejournal.com]

A friend linked me to this community, and I thought this would be the place to share. As you can see from my username, I fix notebooks for a living.

We had a PowerBook come in with the complaint of a disc stuck in the drive. After gutting the machine to get to the drive, then gutting IT to get to the disc, what did we find? 2 discs stuck in the drive, one of which was warped so badly it was like a record somebody left out in the sun.  How they managed to force 2 discs in that drive I have no idea....

Comments

[ghostdandp.livejournal.com]

but it said insert disk 2!!!

[bamatone.livejournal.com]

And it said nothing about removing disk 1!

[margaretc.livejournal.com]

Can I steal copy your icon??

[laptop-mechanic.livejournal.com]

I stole it from somebody else, so feel free. =)

[jokergirl.livejournal.com]

I love it as well, saving it for possible later use.

;)

[laptop-mechanic.livejournal.com]

Maybe you should consider the matching TShirt?

Its here:

http://www.pegasuspublishing.com/xcart/product.php?productid=26623&cat=0&page=1

=)

[patgund.livejournal.com]

*wince* It's bad enough when someone puts a CD that's clearly marked "do not put into slot-loading drives" into one of those.

Not to mention the level of surgery you have to do to some powerbooks and ibooks to get the optical drive out in the first place....

[laptop-mechanic.livejournal.com]

No kidding. I really wish apple would learn that User Friendly and Technician Hostile are not mutually exclusive design philosophies. I HATE the way they engineer their notebook with seemingly malicious forethought to make them as hard to service as possible. Would it KILL them to buy drives that have an honest to $deity manual ejection system that WORKS?

And they wonder why business don't deploy Apple notebooks. I'd shoot the CTO who thought deploying them would be a good idea with something obscenely large caliber. Give me a ThinkPad any day.

[patgund.livejournal.com]

Actually the business I work for is in the process of deploying MacBooks and MacBook Pros to replace not just the PowerBook G4's, but the Dells and Sonys as well. (76 out of 175 done so far, 50 more projected by the end of the year

And since I'm not only the Mac User Support, BUT the only current Apple Certified Portable Technician, guess who gets to repair them....

The Dell tech is getting his ACPT as well, but I swear if they make things any smaller, Apple is going to have to issue their techs smaller fingers as well.

[laptop-mechanic.livejournal.com]

Heh. Its a toss up based on model on which is worse, build quality wise. Apple or Sony.

And it is going to suck to be you once stuff starts failing. At least most of of the teething issues have been resolved now. Last summer, we had an alarmingly high infant mortality rate with macbooks and macbook pros.

I just wish they'd quit using #0 phillips screws. Those things will strip if you so much as look at them funny.

[patgund.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah. We got a batch of first wave MBP and MB's with SATA drives that are now failing, as well has that persistant optical drive problem with the MBPs

[canray.livejournal.com]

I'd shoot the CTO who thought deploying them would be a good idea with something obscenely large caliber.

.666 Magnum?

"It shoots through schools."

[laptop-mechanic.livejournal.com]

I was thinking something in the 30mm range myself...

[rev-thumper.livejournal.com]

Apple keeps asking us if we want to buy more MacBook Pros and fewer ThinkPads and I keep saying: Sure, just make the damn optical drive removable, let me get the hard disk out without major surgery and, in the name of all that is holy, develop a decent docking station for the damn things.

At least I got to make the pitch to the senior product manager for the whole MacBook Pro line.

[laptop-mechanic.livejournal.com]

I would LOVE to bend his ear on notebook design. How did he take it? =)

[rev-thumper.livejournal.com]

We had a good conversation and she listened to what we had to say. But I didn't get any promises either. This is a situation where Apple's industrial design and maintenance are at odds and I don't who will win that argument.

Our point was that a "Pro" notebook that is being sold in volume to corporate and institutional buyers needs pro features and we consider the ThinkPad T Series to be the gold standard for that.

[http://users.livejournal.com/hub_/]

Did they ask about the broken cup holder? The one where it is written 24x?


At the time were Floppy still was used, it happened too.

[manuka.livejournal.com]

Not surprised, I've had to extract a number of dual-CD Powerbooks. I think fundamentally it boils down to the inherently flawed design of the slot loader - you have no way of knowing if there's a disc already in there, and it seems the drive will dutifully swallow a disc even if it's already got one in its belly.

[laptop-mechanic.livejournal.com]

This is why any remotely resembling sanely designed machine uses a tray load drive, the way $deity intended. =) Slot loading drives belong in cars, not computers.