A few weeks prior to going to Syndey for Web Directions South ’09, my MacBook Pro died

One night I was using it. I shut it down and put it in my bag. At work the next day I turned it on and … nothing happened. Completely blank (black) screen. I angsted over it for a while, then called the shop I bought it from. It was still under warranty, so I couriered it  to them.

A week passed. I got a call that the machine was ready. Half an hour later they called back to say it wasn’t. The new parts they had put in (logic board and optical drive) failed some last minute test. They would have to order more parts. Best case was the laptop would be ready on Tuesday. I had tickets to fly to Sydney on Wednesday.

So I waited.

Tuesday come and still no call from the techs. When I called them they explained that the guy working on my laptop was sick. There was no way it would be ready before I went to Sydney

At lunch time on Tuesday, I jumped on a tram and rode down to MSY computing in North Melbourne and bought a eeePC (1000HA).

After my experience with the Asus netbook I bought for the kids, I was prepared for the worst. But the machine exceeded all my expectations. I quickly abused the work bandwidth and ran all the Windows updates, and installed a few apps.

The next day I flew to Sydney.

The eeePC did such a good job. Battery life is less than advertised, by it did survive a whole day of twittering and note taking at the conference (thanks also to the free wireless there). Didn’t have it running all the time of course, but it still impressed me.

Now that I’m back in Melbourne, my MacBook has finally been returned to me. I’ve decided that the Mac can be my home computer for now on. I suspect that being dragged to work and back every day had something to do with it’s break down. And the new eeePC does what I need it to do at work (browse the web )