the title of this post might be a little bit misleading – but it just fits so well to the following little story.. Here we go: About one year a go my most beloved five years old Powerbook broke down – went insane in the main frame – had enough of all the pitty and denied all orders.

What happened..? The motherboard got ‘tired’ or ‘ill’ or actually it just broke. The screen froze in front of my eyes – and after trying a restart it just didn’t start up anymore. That was that.

Of course I was just in the middle of something – so I just had to get a new working station right away – and that’s how I got my new ‘SurfBoard’ I’m sitting at right now: a 15″ MacBook Pro, 2 GHz Intel Core Duo Processor, 1GB Ram etc..

With this new device new problems arose right away: first it was ‘just’ software related problems.. – ..I thought:

My good old software packet ‘Macromedia Studio MX’ was also working partly on the new MacBook, only the most crucial little application ‘Dreamweaver MX’ did not want to cooperate.. – ..and without ‘Dreamweaver’ I can’t really do my daily business..! So I bought ‘Macromedia Studio 8’ right away, about 48 hours after I got my MacBook Pro..

Then everything seemed to work well – I was of course wondering about these daily crashes and the screen freezing every now and then, sometimes even generating ‘nice’ little patterns that strongly reminded me of Knitted Pullovers made in Sweden.. I blamed it on the software – and that the software wasn’t probably capable yet to run on such a fine device like my MacBoo Pro. I blamed it on the Operating System – and updated it. I blamed iTunes, Skype – and kept updating whatever I could update – and just hoped, that one fine day I would have all programs running crash free – and that this would also make the crashes and the freezes and the Swedish Pullover Patterns go away..

Then one day I downloaded ‘Second Life’. From different sources I knew that ‘Second Life’ should just run fine on my machine – but no matter what I tried – ‘Second Life’ froze latest after five minutes – every try fo ‘fly’ ended in a system crash. After even putting up a blank user account with only ‘Second Life’ on it (which also didn’t help) I quit blaming the software – it had to be a hardware problem.

So I packed my MacBook Pro and some ‘nice’ screen shots of crashes and went down the long road to the official Berlin Apple Macintosh repair and assembling shop in Kreuzberg (the company is called Card-Service). First I had some difficulties explaining my problems to the technicians. Of course my MacBook Pro would not want to crash or freeze just like that in front of some technicians.. Trying the F9-Exposé-function ‘helped’: it froze/crashed right away..

About two weeks later I went there again to pick my precious device up and take it home. The motherboard had been exchanged – a free of charge case of a guarantee. Hurray! Finally my MacBook Pro continued to run for more than 24h – no more freezes, no more crashes, no more Swedish Knitwear Patterns..:] ..and finally and for the first time I had the feeling that this one year old but ‘brand new’ device was actually faster and more reliable than my previous ‘good old’ Powerbook..!!

A few days later I ‘just’ wanted to upload some picture I took with my beloved NOKIA 6600 via BlueTooth. But what was that: no BlueTooth hardware found..?! Back to Kreuzberg I went – another case of a guarantee – another four days later I had my ‘PowerBoard’ back.

Back home I was a bit sceptic – even though BlueTooth and MotherBoard seemed to work well. I had to catch up with some work – and so I thought ‘first things first’ and began to write some bills. And that the moment I felt something strange going on underneith my fingertips: the plus key [+] and some other keys started behaving strangely.. – ..so i paid a third visit to that Macintosh workshop – I was alredy greeted with one eye brow up and a skewed smile, cheering comments and sceptic questions – quickly a new keyboard was ordered and less then 48 hours later assembled..

Now more then two weeks passed – no other strangenesses occured – and I am quite optimistic that I won’t see again the Kreuzberg workshop staff so soon.. I knock on wood, cross my fingers and just hope hope hope that my ‘good new’ portable computer runs at leas as bravely and reliable as it should..:] It’s been a long way – but on that way I did neither loose my faith nor my ‘religion’: I still believe in Apple Macintosh Computers and I am happy to (finally) have one: MacBook Pro!

Greetz, t..