News for Thursday, 2 December 2004

First, I want to make clear that this is a personal experience, and that different Mac users can have different experiences with AppleCare; but I think when we are satisfied with a service it is fare to mention it; and not keep our remarks and opinion about something which is not working.
The story:
About 4 weeks ago, I bought a PB 15.2" 1.33GHz from the French RefurbStore, it arrived within 3 days. It was a present for my wife. Of course she completely fell in love with this machine, and it quickly became clear that I will not be able to touch it... Unfortunately, it was also clear that the LCD panel had a problem as shown on the photo below.
This 1cm-wide spot, on the left bottom side, was exhibiting pixels with limited contrast and brightness. They were not "dead pixels", just not responsive. The size of the spot was getting bigger every time the PB was used, and it was clear that it had to be sent back to AppleCare. So I tried to explain to my wife that she will probably have to forget about her PB for 7 to 10 days. Not an easy task, trust me...Then I called Europe AppleCare on November 24th, we did some test and the diagnostic was made: back to Europe AppleCare in Holland for LCD panel exchange. On November 25th I was receiving the box to send back the PB. I called UPS service on the same day to arrange a date that they could pick up the computer. On Tuesday November 29th, the package was sent back to Holland and arrived on Wednesday December 1st in Holland at Europe AppleCare.
The PB was back today!! on Thursday December 2nd. In total it took 48 hours to get the LCD panel repaired... my wife had hardly the time to think about "how to do it without a PowerBook?".
I wish that all Mac users having a problem could experience the same satisfaction than me, but as AppleCare in the US has been under criticisms recently, I wanted to report that the Europe AppleCare can be really efficient. :)

We were recently reporting about the active competition between Taiwan top-three optical-disc media makers. Well, it might be the end of this price war. CMC Magnetics, Ritek and Prodisc have decided to stop this "lowest price possible" race. When you will know that all together they are producing 60% of all CD-R and DVD+/-R media, you might imagine that it will have an impact on the world optical-disc media market. In Europe or in the US, such an agreement would probably have been considered illegal.

CyVice, who is living in Berlin (Germany), has sent us a copy from a German magazine.

This MP3 player is almost identical to the iPod mini. It is a pale copy, even earphones are white-colored!
It includes a 5GB HD for a price lower than the iPod mini.

Thanks to J-P for this info and the photo below.

Cap'Com is organizing every year a meeting to bring together local and regional elected representatives, communication managers and specialists, in charge of public-dedicated communication technology.
This year, on December 1st and 2nd, almost 600 attendees are meeting in Dijon for the 10th meeting.
What's new?: 10 iMacG5 17" available on free-access basis, a bit like a Cyber Café, to work or to surf on the web thanks to a wireless AirPort Express system.

Though a few days behind schedule, the Canadian iTMS is now online.
Good news, it has both English and French interfaces, even though there aren't that many French-singing artists as of yet. But Apple will certainly add more content quickly.
A song is sold for CA$ 0.99, which is roughly €0.62 and US$0.83. So it is today the cheapest iTunes Music Store online.

The PCI-SIG Alliance has updated the specs of PCI Express.
Introducing "PCI Express x16 Graphic 150x-ATX". It is a new standard to power this bus and the card(s) sitting on it, feeding up to 150W. It's practicaly double from the current consumption. Soon, you won't need to turn on the heat to warm your apartment.

Henner, one of our faithful German readers, has given us a heads up on page of ViewSonic's website.
Two years ago, they already had a 22" screen with a high resolution of 3840 x 2400. Back then, you already needed a special card to drive the monster.
And on the Mac, the requirement was a Radeon 8500 Mac Edition (as written here), and we are of course talking about a 3840 x 2400 resolution. You just needed to use the, back then, most recent drivers. We do not know whether this was pre-specs DDL or if the refresh rate was halved, but in any case, it was possible at that time already.