I ordered a brand spankin new 2GHz MacBook through Amazon in mid August. Here it is September 1st and I have yet to use the computer for more than an hour straight. It has spent more time in with Apple's repair shop than on my desk, or warming me up at night.

The MacBook suffers from a severe case of “I don't want to do that” syndrome and shuts down or goes to sleep when any heavy work needs to get done.

So 48 hours after opening it the MacBook went back to Apple. They replaced some video cable stuff and it came back rather quickly, unfixed of course. Within an hour of using it I could repeat the problem and called it in. It came down as a backlight issue, silly me for focusing on the backlight and only mentioning it going into a sleep/shut down state every single time, and mentioning that it worked when hooked to an external display.

So back it went to Apple, as a backlight issue. When they were unable to reproduce the issue it went into an “on hold - need information” state. The peculiar thing about this state is that you have to contact Apple, the fact that they know your contact information from the initial call and the form you fill out doesn't mean they will contact you. So I called Apple up, gave the AppleCare phone chick more information, which I gave everyone already but boiled down to a simple “backlight issue.”

So there my computer sits, in the repair queue, waiting to be fixed and join me back where it belongs.

Tags: apple, macbook, applecare, problem