Disaster strikes...

The unthinkable happened yesterday. I had used my laptop in the morning and shut it down to go to church. When I got back home, I turned on the laptop and heard the familiar sounds, but no picture came on the screen. To make matters worse, I had moved the bookkeeping that I am doing for our church over to the laptop about a week ago.

After a session with an Apple Guru, we determined it was a hardware issue (likely the graphics chip. I've got an in-store session scheduled for later today to have someone check it further.

The good news is that I have backed up my data quick well and I was able to get the bookkeeping running on the desktop again and only had to add 4 checks back in.

I was really impressed with Apple support. It was Sunday afternoon and someone called me after only 10 seconds from the time I logged in to support on the Apple web site. He had me try several things and when he could not help, he scheduled my applointment at the Apple store near me. I don't know where he was calling from, but his area code indicates Texas. At least he was not in India, although with today's technology, I suppose he could have been, but at least I could understand him.

Another good thing was that I had decided to pay the extra for Apple care extended warranty when I bought the laptop two years ago. I never buy extended warranties as they are usually never used.

I'll write further when I know more.

Added: I took my Macbook Pro to the Apple store. As expected the tech there could not get any better result and had to send the laptop in to Apple for repair. My extended Apple Care will cover all costs. He said it will take about a week and they could not guarantee that they would not lose my data. I had the important data backuped up, so that was not a big deal.

On a side note, the Apple store was fancy. In fact, before I noticed the large Apple logo on the front of the store I thought it was an art gallery. Once I got in the store I could see the many large display apple displays. All of them where setup for people to try out. When I checked in, they gave me a little pager that buzzed when my appointment time arrived. All in all, it was a good experience, except for not leaving with my Macbook Pro.