Looks like my semi-monthy blog binge habits are on the cycle again. Sigh.

My last week has been a reminder why you get AppleCare on your Macs. I've had my 17" PowerBook nearly 2 years now. It runs at least 8 hours a day. Often much more. It's probably a bit more steady state than the anticipated laptop usage, so it shouldn't have come as a surprise when my display apparently bit the dust last Monday.

And my former experience with Apple Support was not as rosy as it has been. I was obvioulsy speaking to someone in Indonesia. This was his first experience with this problem. I could tell I was being scripted through a trouble shooting guide. 'Twas a far cry from the time about 3 years ago when I called and got someone in San Jose, someone who actually knew some of the Unix under the hood.

Lucky for me, apparently, if you take it to an authorized Apple repair shop... they lookup your AppleCare support contract via the web, and do the diagnosis and repair right there. Very cool. So I waited a couple of days, and now I've got my MacBack. 1 year to go. So far AppleCare has paid 2x what I paid for it.