For the past couple months I’ve had issues with the optical drive in my MacBook Pro; things like discs that fail to burn correctly, installation discs that get spit out as soon as they are put in and loud grinding noises. So I finally decided it was time to do something about it.
I took the laptop to the Apple store in hopes that they could just swap out the optical drive right there. They could not so I had to send the laptop in to the repair center. That meant being without my primary work machine for “five days”. When I heard that it would take five days to get the laptop back, I assumed that it would be more like seven or even ten days. Isn’t that the way things normally work? DHL came and picked up the box late on a Friday and by Tuesday morning the DHL truck was back in my driveway. That’s less than four days and two of those days were weekend days. Wow! I’ve always liked Apple’s products and now I’m impressed with their service as well.
Through this experience I learned again how much of my work and even my personal life is dependent on technology. I was able to back everything up and transfer to a different computer what I needed to work in the short term. So just in case a current coworker is reading this, I was able to do my job without problems. The biggest thing that I missed was iTunes and my music library. I didn’t restore all my music to the other machine because I would have filled up that hard drive. I also missed the mobility of being able to take my work anywhere. It felt weird to be tied down to a desk instead of being able to maintain my usual nomadic work style. Some of my best, most productive moments are when I’m working at Caribou or Starbucks. Maybe it’s the caffeine and sugar in the coffee that boosts the productivity. Maybe it’s being away from the stack of things on my desk that I need to do sometime that allows me to focus on the single task at hand. In any case, I’m glad to have my MacBook Pro back and in full operational form. And by the way, I’m writing this at the local Starbucks.