Wouldn’t you like to expose your newer readers to some of you earlier posts that they might never have seen? Or remind your long term followers of posts that they might not remember?
Each Friday I will publish a post I wrote on this exact date in a previous year.
How about you? Why don’t you reach back into your own archives and highlight a post that you wrote on this very date in a previous year? You can repost your Friday Flashback post on your blog and pingback to this post. Or you can just write a comment below with a link to the post you selected.
If you’ve been blogging for less than a year, go ahead and choose a post that you previously published on this day (the 17th) of any month within the past year and link to that post in a comment.
This was originally posted on January 17, 2008 (12 years ago!) on my old, old blog.
iMac Attack
When my wife’s PC, an “older” (4 years old) HP desktop computer began to have serious performance issues (e.g., it would take around 10 minutes just to shut down), we decided it was time to get her a new computer. She uses her computer primarily for e-mail and internet access, so she really just needed something basic…nothing fancy. In other words, inexpensive.
My wife is a very good web researcher and she really focused on gathering intelligence about what to replace her aging HP with. She looked into PCs with Windows and looked at Apple computers, since our daughter and her husband both have Macs and love them. She read a lot of negative things about Windows Vista, Microsoft’s new operating system, and also read universally positive comments about Mac’s OS-X operating system. She read that Macs are less prone to internet and computer viruses and hacker attacks than are Windows-based PCs.
With all of this information in mind, we bought her a brand new iMac computer, the one that doesn’t appear to be a computer as much as just a large, flat monitor on a stand. We bought it at our local Best Buy store and also purchased he extended service contract (more about that later).
Sure, I wanted to spend no more than about $500 for a computer, but my wife insisted that the iMac was the better, albeit considerably more expensive, option. So I shelled out $1500 for the iMac, plus another several hundred dollars for software, since none of our Windows software would run on the iMac.
I even paid $100 for the Best Buy Geek Squad to come to our house, set up the computer, provide a brief Mac orientation, and transfer data files from my wife’s ancient HP to her brand new iMac. And it was good. My wife quickly got used to working with Apple’s operating system and with using the Mac software. The computer was fast, responsive, and, according to her, gorgeous.
Unfortunately, just three months and five days after we bought this allegedly reliable, state-of-the-art iMac computer, it simply stopped working. We took it to our local Best Buy, since we bought the iMac and its three-year, $250 extended service warranty. The folks at Best Buy said they’d have to send it back to the factory and projected that we’d have it back in a month. A MONTH! Fuhgeddaboudit, we said.
So we drove the 25 miles to the closest Apple store, where the guy behind the Genius Bar examined the iMac and took it into the “back room,” saying the computer either had a failed power supply or a failed multi-function board. He said they’d run diagnostics on the computer and would do what they had to do to fix it — in just 7-10 workdays. If they couldn’t fix it, they’d replace it, he said.
“Wait,” I said. “We bought a Mac because everyone said how reliable and dependable they are. Why would it fail after just three months? I have had dozens of PCs over the years and none of them failed that quickly.”
The Genius Bar guy shrugged and said, “Yeah, well it’s just a computer. Computers sometimes crash.” End of story.
We drove home and I hooked up my wife’s 4-year old, sluggish HP computer, which works fine, albeit a lot slower than, and not nearly as pretty as, her iMac. But, unlike her iMac, which failed after just three months, her four-year old HP just keeps plugging away, like the proverbial tortoise versus the hare.
This, That, and the Other 
Great idea Fandango. I am not even a month old 🙂 Here is my favourite,
https://gavi2020.wordpress.com/2020/01/06/welcome-to-the-world-of-layers/
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Did yr wif ever switch back to her Mac?
https://studiotionghan.com/2020/01/17/fandangos-friday-flashback-january-17/
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Yes, they did fix whatever the problem was. Now she has a Macbook Pro.
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That’s just nuts. I have a Vista running laptop for games STILL 😁
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That’s amazing. Vista was one of Microsoft’s worst version of Windows.
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Yep. It was free from a friend lol last yr.
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Agree, I skipped this version back in the day
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So did you end up keping the iMac so your wife could keep admiring its beauty?
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Sorry to hear your Mac-as-lemon experience. I’ve had a nice 4-year run with my IMac and have also found the Apple folks great support via the phone.
But of course they’re not flawless. A recent automatic upgrade left me with a screen saver featuring rocks in the ocean that looks like a huge pile of dog poop. Not a cheery welcome to one’s day. My repeated efforts to substitute rotating flowers never took: the dog poop overcame the flowers. The nice Apple woman said yes, others had similarly complained. It’s a flaw that the next update will correct. So I wait.
Here’s one of my favorite posts, done with my daughter’s research input. It gets viewed every few days a year later. Enjoy!
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My iPhone’s screensaver is a starscape. So far it hasn’t been invaded by a pile of dog poop. Your flashback post is fascinating.
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Yes, we got it back around a week later, good as new!
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I had some minor funnies with my current laptop, but my beef was squarely with Dell. It started off as a problem with the touchpad, which I reported after just two weeks. If came back, they had reformatted the disk *and* reinstalled the wrong version of Windows. I had to sort all that myself, plus the touchpad still doesn’t work properly. T(here’s a lesson in there!
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I have a Dell laptop and have been happy with it and the few times I called customer service were handled well.
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I always used Dell, too, but probably I won’t next time. If you ever buy another, there must be a Dell Outlet there? (That’s what they call it here.) Cancelled orders etc. You can’t be too choosy with the exact spec, but I’m quite demanding and have always managed to find something. The prices are a lot better than the main site.
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I don’t think they have Dell Outlets here. You can buy Dells at Best Buy or online, but I think that’s it…at least where I live.
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If I remember correctly, Dell used to have dedicated stores in the Midwest (I don’t know about anywhere else at the time)… not sure if they were called outlets. I’m also not sure if it was Dell or Gateway; I’m thinking of the personal computers that came in cow-pattern boxes.
https://www.geek.com/mobile/gateway-and-dell-go-separate-ways-550188/
Another fifteen or so years on (after that article), Dell has combined with EMC.
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That was Gateway with the cow-patterned boxes. I had a Gateway desktop, wow, maybe 30 years ago.
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In the UK the Dell Outlet is a web site. I think most everything they do here is on the web. I’m trying to think….I don’t think there is anywhere here (bricks and mortar) which is the “go-to” place. And there are only maybe a couple of web sites I can think of. I’m gonna be stuck when I need to replace this thing!
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Yesterday I met up with a few guys that I have not seen in twenty years and Anthony was saying how his computer is trashed and I said, “You got to stay off of those porn sites”. This girl in the parking lot cracked up laughing and said, “You are so funny”, but I was just telling the truth, because I know how those sites affect your computer.
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Damn, do you think my wife was frequenting porn sites back then?
By the way, your comment went directly to my trash file, probably because I have the word “porn” in my blacklist.
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My oh my that is really frustrating. I own Macs and have had issues, but not that bad!
In general, though, Macs have given me less problems than the PCs did. But…it’s always something!
My flashback:
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I’m glad you liked the post. My daughter promised me more articles on the human-animal bond when she has time. I love the topic.
If this publishing rate is you when you’re in transition, I can’t imagine how prolific you’ll be once you’re settled. I can’t keep up!
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My daily FOWC with Fandango prompts are scheduled a few weeks in advance, as are my Friday Flashback posts. It’s my responses to other bloggers’ prompts, and other day to day posts, that have slowed down. Plus, I haven’t been able to keep up with the posts published by many of the bloggers I follow regularly. I still try, but the time I can on WordPress won’t be back to “normal” probably until late February or early March.
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I’m sure everyone understands.
I’m planning to publish my weekly post tomorrow—doing a lot of deep breathing because the past two weeks I’ve seen them disappear before my eyes as I hit publish—and the HEs don’t know why.
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WordPress works (or doesn’t work) in mysterious ways.
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Nothing like an old friend ( HP) to step in a moment of need.
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A post I wrote September 17 2019 for FOWC Fandango – Duplicate
https://jengoldie493473930.wordpress.com/2019/09/17/break-a-leg-j-e-goldie-fowc-fandango-duplicate-september-17-2019/
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I remember this post! Thanks for the flashback!
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You’re welcome! Wow! You remembered! Cool 🙂
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Yay, I did post something on January 17, 2019!
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I had a Mac like that, something like a 28” screen on the diagonal; people commented that it was huge. It lasted like thirteen years or more with no problems. Then, “my ex” acted like he was doing something super clever when I was working on a Word document; he made the text cover the entire screen. I could no longer find a “save” icon or a way to exit or anything else, and he never got around to restoring the screen to normal. Subsequently, the entire machine quit.
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What a “nice guy” your ex was. 🤦🏼♂️
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