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Wednesday, August 30, 2006

Too good to be true

Friday night we were having thunderstorms, so I shut down the eMac, knowing full well that that's what I did the last time it wouldn't come on. But I thought, well, it was shut down at the Apple store, and it worked when I came home, and frankly, you know, you're going to have to shut it down at some point, right? So I shut it down and went to bed, and of course, in the morning, it wouldn't come on.

It would power on, the apple screen would come on, then it would flicker a few times, and the video would go off. I restarted it a few times, with the same result.

I did some more research at the Apple site's support section, and I guess this time I used the right search terms, because I found that certain eMacs have a defective part that causes the video to act exactly the way mine had been acting. I checked the serial number, and mine is within the range, so even if I didn't have the extended warranty, they would fix it free of charge. Of course, that begs the question of why the Apple tech didn't know that (or didn't mention it) when I was in there, since the recall was dated mid-June.

So anyway, that evening I told Bob, and he tried restarting it a few times, tapping it (which is what made it come on the first time it did this), but no luck. He said he thought we should leave it on for awhile and see what happened, so I did. It would occasionally flicker, and I got my hopes up, but it was flickering with weird random lines and colors, and it eventually settled on this:


After leaving it that way for awhile, I thought maybe it wouldn't be good for the monitor, so I went over to shut it down, and then decided to try restarting it one more time for good measure. This time it came on. So weird.

It's been fine ever since, but I know it's only a matter of time. I need to take it in again, but of course the problem is that the store isn't at a convenient location, there's no guarantee of close parking, and the thing weighs a TON. And it's not just heavy, it's awkward. But one of these days I'll get back down there with it.

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