Why I didn’t walk but ran towards the promised-land that is all things Apple.

After lots of fun trying to get Windows to work well with my Ruby on Rails development setup, I ended up facing not one, but two hardware failures. My Dell all-in-one machine decided it no longer wanted to turn on. Pushing the power button did absolutely nothing. No sound, no flashing lights, no dancing, singing, or putting on any kind of show. I took it to a local repair shop, thinking it’s most likely just the power switch and should be a cheap and easy fix. Nope. Because it’s an all-in-one machine, it’s nearly impossible to repair, apparently. So I called up Dell, re-upped my warranty which had expired a month or so back, and they dispatched parts and a repair man. Couple days later, we were back up and running. Six days after this, the train once again derailed. Same exact problem. Push the power button and nada. Zilch. No song and dance. So back on the phone to Dell and once again they dispatched parts and a repair man.

This was not the first time I had encountered the dark-side of Dell. I had previously purchased a nice 17” laptop form them and it eventually had a screen failure. Sent it in, they replaced the screen, and all was well for about 9 months until the screen failed in the exact same manner. Of course the second failure was after the warranty had expired and so now it serves as my media center pc, connected to my tv so the monitor isn’t needed.

Dell used to build quality machines, and maybe they still do. Maybe I just had bad luck on two machines in a row. I dunno. And I understand that hardware will inevitably fail. I go in expecting that and am not the least bit surprised when it happens. But when it happens twice, in exactly the same manner, I start to wonder about the quality of the items I’m spending my hard earned cash on.

And this is where Apple comes in. I had been to the Apple store numerous times, fawning over their impressive machines. I had even nearly proved their laptops waterproof with how much drooling I’ve done upon them. They build a helluva machine in the MacBook Pro, especially with the beautiful Retina displays. Until now I had been fairly-well served by my Dell machines but with four failures in a row, I was ready for a change. I was ready to spend quite a bit more in the hope that maybe, just maybe, this time I’d get a machine that not only kicked the bejesus out of machines I’ve had in the past, but also actually perform trouble-free for a couple years. Am I really asking too much? Is 2 years of worry-free service too much from a modern computer? I think not. But to be sure, I bought the 3 year warranty which covers everything except physical damage, expecting I’ll want to trade-in for whatever new and shiny thing Apple comes up with by then.