Comments on: A Tale of Two Hard Drives: Apple’s Secret Weapon?

By: Darrin Suddith

Darrin Suddith — Thu, 23 Sep 2010 09:29:05 +0000

Hay Admin , i like with ur blog. Do you have twitter or facebook so i can follow you ?

By: mr.hp

mr.hp — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 16:01:36 +0000

any real technician has 2nd level support phone numbers. they skip all the troubleshooting and just ask you what problem youre having. im on the phone for maybe 10 minutes and i receive a case number(for the record) with an overnighted part order. if youre saying spending 2000 on a probook is a better deal then spending even 1500 on an HP then we can agree to disagree. if both hp and apple laptops are under warranty its solely shipping costs and installation time and apple loses in both categories, also if there is no warranty the apple HD costs a lot more.

By: Leo

Leo — Sat, 10 Jul 2010 19:19:00 +0000

tw@t

By: Leo

Leo — Sat, 10 Jul 2010 19:16:59 +0000

Josh, stick it.

By: Leo

Leo — Sat, 10 Jul 2010 19:09:43 +0000

Yours goes in the “takes one to know one category”.

By: Leo

Leo — Sat, 10 Jul 2010 19:08:49 +0000

Funny, I have just the opposite experience. Apple tech was crappy. Couldn’t verify address, since it had been a gift…etc. And a hard drive on a Dell is wayyyyyy easier to replace than in an apple notebook. Troll a little?

By: George

George — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 17:26:49 +0000

It's a night & day difference between Apple & Dell with regard to business support for tech people. I support a small business and we have mostly Dell Optiplex & Latitudes. We also have a 1 Macbook Pro. Something on a Dell breaks and I can either web-chat or call them. Usually pretty quickly they have a part shipping next day air to me. They've done that even with things like laptop keyboard modules. If it's something I can't fix, they send a tech out next day who fixes it on-site while I'm watching. A motherboard swap takes about 30 minutes and is usually completed within 24 hours of when I first call in the problem. Now compare that to Apple. The ethernet port on the Macbook Pro went out. We are not near a retail store so the only option was mailing it in with a 7-10 day turnaround. On top of that, I didn't want to send the hard drive in because we have confidential information on it. They almost turned my repair down (despite having Apple Care and being within warranty). I finally convinced them to make a note that the hard drive wouldn't accompany the laptop. They said there are no guarantees that they'll actually fix the hardware problem without the hard drive installed. Unbelievable. Here's hoping they fix the hardware without the drive. I think we'll stick with Dell from now on.

By: Dr. Fred

Dr. Fred — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 04:23:00 +0000

Yeah. Here are my daughter’s experiences with Apple.Daughter #1 loses hard drive in Scotland. Rides a bus for an hour to get to an Apple store. They tell her to reformat and reinstall. Two days later it’s dead. They order a new one. It takes a week. Has another hour bus ride (one way) to get it replaced. Daughter #2 loses hard drive in US. Goes to Apple store (fortunately close by). They replace hard drive. She goes home and the notebook can’t find the hard drive. Goes back. They screw around for an hour and conclude that the new drive is dead (duh!). But now it’s too late to order a new one because Apple doesn’t work after dark. So now she’s waiting at least two days to get the new one.

Now for mine. Have my IT staff send in notebook for screen replacement because white is dirty gray (out of warranty) and new hard drive. The nearest Apple store is 1.5 hrs away. They send it back, saying it’s just a little dim and a new screen would cost $600. And they kindly reformat the hard drive and reinstall the OS to fix the hard drive. The drive is so flakey I can’t even restore from backup. I send it out for repair myself to 3rd party, get new screen for $300 and a hard drive that works.

Six months later I have to dump it anyway, because running the fans at 3000RPM no longer cools it down enough to keep it going.

Dell hard drive replacement: I call them, tell them the problem, and they ship one immediately. I pull out the old one, stick in the new one, and I’m fine. Incidentally, you don’t have to dismantle the machine to replace the hard drive (duh!).

The bottom line is, Dell and Apple both make crap hardware for notebooks. Dell’s support isn’t great overall, but at least they’re open 24/7, and if you online chat instead of calling you can even understand them. You get better help if you call their Linux support line – they’re in the US.

Incidentally, I only run Windows under duress, and only in VMs, so don’t give me crap about PC kiddie sites.

By: Josh

Josh — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 07:35:49 +0000

yeah this review wasn’t biased at all… I mean exaggerate much? Also this guy called with a “I’m getting what I want and that’s all I’m interested in” He should have asked the customer to try and find the disks before (or maybe while supposedly spending 20 minutes guessing, ha!) calling. I’m sure he fought the tech every step of the way that didn’t involve him getting a hard drive sent out asap. Although I will admit I hate calling CS for any company.

By: Nate

Nate — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 20:07:59 +0000

How about a story about an Apple iMac hard drive that fails 1-1/2 yrs after purchase. Not sure what the typical Dell warranty is, but I don’t want to be paying Apple to replace their crap hard drive have that short a period.

Big fan of Apple in general, but very unhappy w/my current situation. They were going to charge me $370 (parts and labor). They tell me hard ware fails. Well, stand behind your product. Take out the bad drive, and push it back to the manufacturer. These things can’t be breaking after 1-1/2 yrs.!!

I ended up buying a hard drive from Newegg for $80. I’ll try to install myself. If I fail, the Geek Squad at BestBuy will do it for $50. Saved myself the difference, the a little bit of pride not padding Apple’s pockets for their crap drive.