[BlueSkyJaunte]

What is it with computer companies these days? Has quality gone completely down the toilet? Do they hire microcephalic idiots off the street and give them badges that say "Genius"?

My 15" Al PowerBook has this really irritating issue of intermittently failing to "wake up" when "put to sleep" (maybe 5% of "wake" attempts). The screen stays blank but caps/numlock work and all I can do is restart the machine. This only happens when using it on battery power and with WiFi active and being used. I learned to live with it because when using it in situations where I'd want to "sleep" it, I wasn't doing anything important (like graphics/video editing, taxes, etc.). If it didn't take a geologic era to reboot, it wouldn't bother me much. Well, the infamous "white spots" screen issue arose so I decided to bring it in to my friendly neighborhood Apple Store to get both problems fixed.

The AlBook came back with the screen fixed and a stick of RAM attached to a letter that said, basically, "We found this 3rd party junk RAM in your laptop, it's not our fault that the laptop doesn't wake up properly with it in your computer." Apparently when I bought the laptop from MacMall their RAM upgrade consists of some 3rd-party "unauthorized" RAM manufacturer's product.

The friendly neighborhood "Genius" said if I bought the super-special handy-dandy high-qualilty $300 Apple RAM and used it instead, I'd be back to my 768MB with no worries. "Bull*****," said I, but he promised to refund the money if the problem re-emerged with the Apple RAM. You see, I've owned 10 different laptops/desktops of my own, and administrate a lab that's had over 50 boxes cycle through it in the past 5 years. The only time I've had "bad RAM" was back before most computers came with with 640k.

Well, I can't get by with the mere 256MB in the AlBook so I bought the RAM and went home. Tried using the machine for a while at 256MB anyway, and didn't see the problem come up. Promising. Installed the RAM, and whaddaya know, same problem. Maybe the 5th time it froze when waking up.

Brought the machine back in. They sent it out. It came back a week later with a different stick of RAM in it and a note that "the problem's all fixed now!"

You can see what's coming next.

During the drive home my wife was playing with the computer trying to get the problem to come up and it happened within the first 15 tries.

Turned around and handed it back to "Mr. Genius".

They sent it out.

It came back, "Unable to reproduce problem."

Now it's at the store where they've been trying to reproduce the issue for the past two days. How? By repeatedly opening and closing the damn computer. WTF? That's not normal usage! Open the computer, DO SOMETHING WITH IT YOU MEATHEADS, then close it and try to wake it up again. Now I'm waiting to see if they can reproduce the problem, or if I have to drive in and do it for them.

Though the most recent "Genius" that I spoke to said that since it happens only when there's extra RAM in the expansion slot, it's good grounds to replace the "logic board" (sound like a catch-all fix to me).

I've been out a machine for the past month because of these retards. And I suspect I'm out $300 because I'll bet my original "awful" RAM module wasn't faulty to begin with. Grrrr........

Just needed to vent. I really like the looks of the miniMac but after this nonsense I suspect I'll never buy another computer...EVER. From ANYONE. I've had it!