neurological dryer lint

i've heard plenty of mixed stories about apple's support - ranging from brilliant and efficient to careless and awful. i've got to chalk them up as impressive after today's trip to the 'genius bar' (i managed to avoid losing my breakfast at that self-important sign hanging above their support kiosk).

i made my appointment early in the morning, showed up on time, and found my name listed on the screen on the wall as the next customer in line. the guy took one look at my trackpad and said 'yup, discoloration'. went into 'the back', found the appropriate parts, filled in some information and said that it'd probably be a day or two. he offered to sell me procare service - which, for $99 a year, would up my priority on the workbench and get my system fixed even faster. i asked first why, if the parts were there, i would need to be bumped anywhere. he reconsidered and said it should be done today, maybe tomorrow. awesome. renee and i left to waltz around the mall a bit more.

got a call 45 minutes later - my repairs were done. i picked it up 15 minutes later. well then.

say what you will about the weak marketshare, the niche products, the hefty price tags... the apple store experience really gives them the lock on support. even if you bring your wintel laptop into a microcenter or compusa, you're not getting that thing back in under three days. i'm not sure if the sony stores have the same type of support for their PC's... if they don't, they should.

btw we hit up the kenwood sony store and played with a few of their new toys. their UMPC vaio was cute but far overpriced and functionally clumsy. windows xp simply doesn't scale gracefully down to a 7" screen. the mylo communicator/media player is a bit more interesting - a very stylish little gizmo with a decent screen and a full bag of features. imagine a PSP with a (much) smaller screen, wifi, a better web browser, a text editor (how revolutionary), skype and google talk clients, and a $150 bump in price. or, perhaps a better comparision: a sidekick with more built-in apps and no cellular service.

in the hunt for the perfect desktop background i may have mentioned mandolux before. the dude just did a phenominal dual-monitor set of a reds hat. plus he's got dozens of other amazing images. do the guy a favor and donate if you grab a few.