Down Goes Macbook Hard Drive Like Frazier!

On Friday, I learned that my Macbook hard drive had indeed bought the farm to push up daisies and all contents went back to the Architect's construct for lost data.  Call it a sign of technological maturity or simply being blessed far above what I could ask or think because I have not been fazed at the development in the least bit.

Everything is clearly out of my hands and one of the biggest surprises learned is that there are no differences between hard drives for the PC and Mac.  This tidbit meant that I could do the repair myself and skip paying Apple $300 to $500 just for the hard drive alone plus the labor charges or to any authorized Apple repair shop.

Since my Macbook is already out of warranty, there is nothing to lose on the repair itself since it is within my repair range.  I have fried enough computers to know:)

I had a great day on Friday and had my oldest daughter with me the entire time.  She had a full week of winter break left and most kids had already returned to school. 

Earlier within the day we had gotten our new 2008 tag sticker with a zero wait (walked straight from the door straight to the counter) and I picked up a wireless mouse made by Microsoft that I am still loving with each touch.  After hearing my favorite oil change place try to fry me on a relatively simple repair, I knew that I was not going to pay a lot for this hard drive repair.

With any suitable hard drive serving as a candidate for the repair, I have discovered that there are prices easily below $200.  I am going with Western Digital as the manufacturer regardless of the actual size of the hard drive and could have purchased one today right at $150 but I saw one online at $134 (before taxes are applied on each quote).

The Macbook Pro (MBP) is available at my favorite online store for music equipment and Apple computers with multiple payments available, so I plan on obtaining one within a week and postpone the hard drive repair until February or almost indefinitely.

The Macbook may become a system for either my wife or my kids to use.  As a result, I am inclined to keep the size of the hard drive to be bought higher than the previous, original hard drive space (80GB) but under the maximum seen so far (320GB).  My target price is looking good at $134 for the 250 GB HD.

250 GB is still no joke and it is awesome to see how storage space is really the new commodity that is to be taken for granted these days.

I always fought to no avail the hard drive wars of limited space and one can buy terabytes of space for what used to cost sub-gigabyte storage space.

But I will need to confirm why the MBP is needed and what advantages are being picked up versus repairing my Macbook.

The repaired Macbook will clearly have more HD space than the MBP does at 160 GB.  I already knwo that the MBP will not have Leopard even though the price is the full price for MBPs sold by Apple, but Apple does have a program called "Leopard up-to-date" that provides a free upgrade to Leopard in the post-iPhone fiasco that occurred last year.

The multiple payments at zero-percent interest are simply phenomenal and are loosening my mind and wallet at the same time.

The portability factor is the real asset being purchased because being able to work, surf, produce, or invest anywhere that has wi-fi is an asset that is really not fully understood until the capability is obtained.

Limitations melt and new opportunities are revealed to the initiated.  Doubters or the not-easily-convinced will never know how much they loss as an opportunity cost for not "getting it" earlier.

Just from the flow of this blog entry tonight, the debate of the HD space is pitting the MBP and Macbook head to head harder than they went at it earlier today.  90 GB of HD space is the real difference, so I need to put a price tag on the 90 GB.  The time required to obtain the HD for the repair is 3 business days after the order is placed and there is an unknown time limitation if the multiple payment options disappear as it did after I bought the Macbook.  So what's a geek to do?

Through the risk and money management that I have been practicing and still learning more in this new year, I see the solution coming over the horizon.

The 250 GB HD will be obtained first and we will see how the repair goes.  If the repair goes smoothly and without any hitches, the MBP ---whoa, whoa, whoa!!!!

The MBP has to be purchased first because of the "Leopard up-to-date" program that expires on January 26th I believe.  I almost do not feel like buying Leopard now or later for some reason and the Macbook did not have it.  But I know that the HD space limitation was a reason why.

So dude, you're getting a MBP!  LOL:)

The only data loss of the original HD is one song that was still being developed but I've lost greater masterpieces before.  I am just glad that my FlickrBeats were not lost since they represented not only a creativity breakthrough, but an investment of time and effort that cannot be recaptured otherwise.

I will share the new car smell of the MBP soon!  At least there will be multiple laptops with the iSight cameras that will allow me to create "at the computer or desk" videos that would have been too prohibitive with my time schedule for anyone else to be involved.

So it all works out in the end one way or another!

Peace!