Gremlins
High tech devices can bring a lot of convenience to our lives, when they work. For me, last night showcased just how dependent we can become on such things.
Last night, my wife’s MacBook shut down unexpectantly. A subsequent attempt at a reboot displayed the “question mark folder”, instead of the monochromatic Apple logo. The last time this happened, her hard drive had turned itself into a brick. Luckily, I had backed up her important files to the new file server this time. Last time, she lost everything.
Two days ago, the Tivo stopped working. My wife said that it had entered an infinite cycle of rebooting, playing and getting stuck. After seeing it for myself, it looks like the hard drive on that beast is on the way out. It’s not a doorstop yet, which is good. It looks like there’s a bad sector where the software records the “live” buffer. Now, imnsho (in my not so humble opinion), the software should figure out that things are rotten in Denmark and find another spot on the disk to record the live buffer. If that feature is in there, it’s not working correctly. So the Tivo, while not completely dead, is unusable.
Three months ago, the XBox 360 stopped working. I get the “red ring of death” when I turn it on. My son is quite upset at this turn of events. Thank you Microsoft QA Department. Both of you.
In the short term, I fixed the Tivo issue by buying an a/v cable to run from the cable box directly to the a/v ports on the front of the tv, just so we could watch tv, even if limited to *gasp* real-time viewing only.
Today, I took the wife’s MacBook to the Genius Bar at the Apple Store. I was dead sure that the drive was kaput, but, lo and behold!, it wasn’t. A quick run of the Disk Utility app, fixed things on the drive and it seems as good as new. Deep down, I’m skeptical, but if it’ll allow me to make a newer backup as soon as I get home, so much the better.
The CDRW/DVD drive on it is a goner, however. I’d known this for quite some time, but my wife doesn’t install software nor does she listen to CDs on it. The Apple Store geniuses will replace the drive for $300+, but I balked at the price. I can do it myself, if need be. Mac OS X also allows users to share their CD/DVD drives so I can install software on the wife’s MacBook by using the DVD drive on my MacBook Pro and sharing it. No problem.
Since the Tivo has gone bonkers, after talking with some of the other geeks I work with, I decided to buy a new HD-capable Tivo. This one can support two CableCard tuners, allowing viewing on one channel while another channel is recorded simultaneously. I can even record two channels simultaneously while watching a pre-recorded show. Plus, it’s HD-capable. Plus, it’ll display HD content on a standard def tv through a variety of methods including letterboxing.
As for the original Tivo hard drive. Well, a Tivo is essentially a single-purpose Linux computer. The hard drive can be read by Linux computers and the files on the drive can be copied off. So we shouldn’t lose anything.
And the XBox? I have to call GameStop and see what my options are.
All in all, I got slammed by all three of the big computer-tech paradigms: Apple, Microsoft and Linux. The Apple one was handled free of charge in their store, minus the CD/DVD replacement. While the Apple replacement cost is annoying, my warranty had expired, there is a software workaround within OS X, so I wasn’t forced into paying for a replacment of limited usefulness.
The Linux fix involves a feature/machine upgrade, but I’m not going to hold it against the Linux paradigm. If I wanted to go through the effort, I could just replace the hard drive with a new one by copying the Tivo software and files onto the new disk. Hell, I could even put in a bigger hard drive, if I wanted to. However, with HD going on-line in a year or so, upgrading the Tivo now saves me from the effort later. Plus, the price on Amazon was outstanding.
The Microsoft issue scares me. I don’t expect it to go well at all. ‘Nuff said.