Tuesday, November 3, 2009

Day 1: Just Not There

cardiomachine: 20 mins bike, 15 mins elliptical
(read Leah S. Marcus's THE POLITICS OF MIRTH)
stretching: yes
pushups: 14
crunches: 30
breakfast: one egg, baguette, pear, vitamins
lunch: breaded cod filets, malt vinegar, brie and crackers
apartment clean: yes

Today is not a fitting beginning for yet another new health resolution to begin. I just spent the last four hours on the phone with, and recovering from, Dell Customer Service. The service was nice enough, it's just that the product sucks: suddenly, for no reason, it's not detecting my harddrive. It's just not there.

And the data may never be recovered. Things I lost: my ten-minute play FOUND (spent most of last week writing it, though it survives in hard copy); my first three days' work for National Novel Writing Month (5100 words); some really massive changes to GLORY FOR YOU, my full-length play; and thankfully only useless bits of my second dissertation chapter (I've been dragging my feet... and I'm glad I did).

Give me one good reason why I shouldn't switch to a Mac this Christmas. Fuck Windows. I'm serious. I'm maybe serious.

3 comments:

Sharon K. Goetz said...

Because everyone I know with a Mac laptop has had to take it in to the so-called Genius Bar on a ridiculous schedule, like once every nine or ten months.

I have never had trouble with a Dell laptop. Guess I was lucky, but lucky for 14 years is a lot. My old NT laptop, purchased nine years ago, still runs. (FWIW, I tend to buy a relatively high-end machine every four to five years, and to get the four-year warranty. This seems to mean that Dell supplies me with better-quality components so that I won't need to call in the warranty... and, according to friends in the computer industry, that isn't only a guess.)

Good luck retrieving your HD data.

Matthew said...

I think maybe the problem isn't Dell, but is Vista. I've been using Dells for a good decade now and they tend to slow up on me after a couple of years, but I'm also pretty bad about, you know, dropping them. This is the first time one has just shut down on me without it being directly related to anything I've done.

Right on about the Genius Bar. I think, even though the ads have convinced me that Mac users have better hair, that I will keep the home court advantage and stick to what I know.

Sharon K. Goetz said...

Vista does seem in general to be devilspawn.

Dan likes Windows 7, so far. I haven't gone there yet.