Boudicca: Back from the dead!
As you may recall – or not – my iMac G5 “Boudicca” died just over a year ago. She was one of the very first unibody iMacs, and she was nothing but trouble from the start. (The one I’m talking about was actually a replacement for the original one that self-destructed within six months of purchase.) When she died the last time, we were given a ridiculous quote from the Apple Store to have her fixed. The logic board was riddled with blown and leaking capacitors. She was out of warranty, out of AppleCare, and out of luck. I found out that there had been a Repair Extension Program for this specific issue – and my serial number was even covered! – but alas, it had expired in December 2008 (about two months before mine died). I bought a new laptop and set her aside, hoping that maybe she’d be worth some money on eBay. One of my resolutions for the New Year was to deal with the issue, so I started calling Apple repair shops to see if they were interested in her for parts. Nobody was interested. In desperation, I tweeted that she was for sale if anybody wanted her. A friend-of-a-friend (who happens to work in Apple tech support) wrote back, suggesting that I call Apple Support again. He said that he still regularly saw machines come in with my issue, and that several of them had been granted “exceptions” to the Repair Program and fixed free-of-charge. It seemed too good to be true. I called up the number and spent half an hour talking to a nice guy, who eventually transferred me up to the manager. They put me on hold for a bit… then the magic words: “You’re approved!” He put it into the system and I took the machine to NextByte the next day. They told me there’d probably be some wait before they could get to it, but I didn’t care. Hey, at this point it’s a free computer, right? Six weeks later, I finally called Nextbyte to see what the heck was happening… and was told that my machine had been fixed for weeks. They just had never called me! (Idiots.) This morning we picked her up. I deliberately didn’t plug her in before heading to the Guild AGM, knowing that if she was still broken I’d just stress about it all day. So when I finally got home tonight, I plugged her in and hit the power button. BONGGGGGG! Success. I was up and running on the network within minutes. It’s so nice to have a desktop machine again! And now DeskCam will actually be from my actual desk again! So huge, huge thank yous to Stu for advising me how to fix it up. I owe him one!