If you are a windows user, and are wandering around apple store, this message is for you. I have a macbook 13 inch for two years. My experience has been awful. I am writing this note so that you will not go through the disappointment and madness I am feeling right now.

Apple computers, imac, macbook, mac pro, and so forth, are all sold at premium price. For the money you take out of your pocket, I strongly believe that you deserve a premium product quality as well as reasonable technical support. But will you really be getting it? Not likely.

First, the quality of the product. On the first day when I received my macbook and tested it out, I found that my external speaker did not work at all. The macbook was not able to play any sound unless I pluged in an earphone. I brought this brand new defect laptop to the apple store, and it took over a week for them to fix it. I had to go to the apple store again to pick it up. Moreover, my hard drive completely died one and half years after the purchase. I had no access at all to everything on the hard drive for over two weeks. Imagine if you are a student, and you are in the middle of writing an essay which was due the next day. Luckily, a very kind technician friend helped me to restore the data, otherwise I would be totally messed up. I don't have apple care, so paid over $120 for replacing the dead hard drive. Now my power adapter (the very infamous Magsafe) has been weird for more than half a year. When you plug it in, it is up to the mood of the Magsafe plug to decide whether it wants to work or not. It would drive you crazy sometimes regardless what you do, it wouldn't recharge your computer. -- All you could do at that point was to watch your computer running out of battery and die. After a substantive research on the internet, I found many customers have pointed out that Magsafe is not reliable at all. Many of them were able to have a replacement. I talked with Genius Bar, and for some reason they just wouldn't give me a replacement. I explained that this quality issue isn't uncommon, and many users were able to get a replacement at the store. The Genius Bar technician just wouldn't do it. They did give me an option: The price for a new power adapter is $99.

Next, the service. To be fair, I cannot say all of the apple store staff are like this, but most the points of contact I have encountered so far gave me a feeling that they don't care what my problem is. All they want is to have you pay for something.

Maybe you are thinking about Apple care. Yes, apple care is good only if you are willing to pay $249 up in the front. I won't complain about anything if I spill water onto my laptop because if that's the case, I should be responsible for the accident that I caused. But the issues here are unsatisfying quality and unfair treatment by service staff especially when you think of how much you have paid for it.

Finally, do the calculations. A macbook is $1100+ plus tax and plus all the troubles above. It's just not worth it. I had a Dell before this macbook. It had problems, too. But Dell's price is much more reasonable to me. Think twice. Apple macbook isn't fancy at all.

:(