I have a laptop, hallelujah

[danaeris]

I have a 3.5 month old floor model 12" iBook (the current version G4, 1.33 GHz, 40 Gigs, 512 RAM, etc.), and a new linksys wireless G router. Total cost to me? $1115 - $15 mail-in rebate = $1100 plus tax.

Now I have to transfer the data from my old iBook to the new one, and then try to sell the old one to someone for cash. Anyone have any idea on how to do the transfer myself?

Also, Light Computer Centre vindicated themselves, and officially rock, even if their repair guy took today off such that I can't do the data transfer until Monday.


Around 3:30 I find out that Sherway Best Buy has a current model open box iBook that they will offer me for $1100. I ask about their insurance plan and they say the tag says $320 but they should be able to cut a deal on that as well. We hop in the car, stop at Light to pick up the laptop, while I'm chatting on the phone with my Visa card getting the credit limit increased so that I can buy the laptop on it and have the record for tax purposes.

Light is super nice -- they don't charge me for the diagnostic! Wow! I check to make sure that they have neither a 12" iBook or PowerBook used, and we get back in the car and head to Toronto. On the way, I consult with knotty_mark and decide to hold out for AppleCare.

At Best Buy, they can't find the laptop for 45 minutes. When they find it, it's actually $1187.99 "But we'll give it to you for the price quoted." There's a big note on it that says that customer data must be cleared first. They actually offer to give it to me WITH the customer data, and I point out that that would violate the customer's privacy, and shouldn't they have wiped it when they first received it?

They say that wiping it will take an hour, so we decide to go and get dinner; we've now been there for about an hour.

Another hour has passed and we return for the laptop. "Oh, that laptop is defective, but we can give you the floor model, which has been used by random people for the last 3-4 months and probably has a run-down battery and charger."

At this point I throw a fit and ask for the supervisor, who eventually brings in HIS manager. They offer to swap the defective laptop's battery and charger, and give me their $300 three year service plan for $100. They also try to tell me that the original laptop price was contingent on me buying the three year plan, which it really wasn't.

It turns out that they don't HAVE any new 12" iBooks to offer me. If I want an iBook, it's the floor model, or bust. I say I don't want their plan, but could they offer me some other concession? They ask what I need for my laptop, maybe a case? No, I have a case. Maybe I should have asked for something cooler (an up to date version of Microsoft Office, for instance), but what I asked for was a wireless g router... it's just what happened to come to mind at the time; I was pretty flustered since I was missing the Hamilton Poly social at this point. They say sure, pick which one you want, pay the value of the mail-in rebate, and we'll handle the rest of the cost. At this point, including the time we spent waiting and eating dinner, we've been there three hours. With the driving, the whole escapade took all three of us (both my parents and me) nearly 5 hours each.

So, there you have it. I have a laptop. I'm not sure coming out of this whether I was treated fairly or not. I do think they were trying to make up for it, and I also think the people I was interacting with were not the people who fucked up. The real fuck up is whoever (1) took the laptop in without immediately wiping its memory (at which point they would have discovered that the cd drive was defective), and then (2) put it somewhere weird in the back of the ware house such that no one noticed that this had happened, and they couldn't find it when I first got there.

Thus is my tale of woe. Or something. Now I just need to transfer data, reinstall third party software I own, and configure the thing. Sell the old laptop, and buy AppleCare.

Still, I got a good deal considering. The whole experience has sucked ass, but I made out pretty well in the end. I'm not sure that, in old fashioned terms, the upgrade from my old specs to these specs is worth $1100 - value of router, but it comes closer than it would have if I had bought the laptop differently, and I was able to walk away laptop in hand.

Comments

[thespian.livejournal.com]

does the old computer have wireless? use the router to set up a small home network for the transfer.

[danaeris.livejournal.com]

I do have a router set up, and the old ibook does have wireless, but it may not be able to turn on, and if it does turn on, it may refuse to stay on for any length of time. Certainly, it may not turn on for long enough to transfer that much data. I should try, nonetheless, just in case.

[danaeris.livejournal.com]

My one concern about trying is that I know little enough about computers that I have no idea if trying to run the thing with a faulty logic board could corrupt the data on the hard drive.

[random-vamp.livejournal.com]

Theres a utility installed with Tiger called "Migration" something that will allow you to directly transfer user accounts. You can also restart your old iBook in firewre mode (I think by holding down "T" during startup), and then plug it in to your new one as a Firewire device, at which point you just copy from it as if it was a harddrive.

[unseelie23.livejournal.com]

A firewire cable and the old machine in 'Target Disk Mode' would do the trick as well. You may need to either make sure you have the same short user name, or do a little chown'ing and chgrp'ing via terminal.