Computer nightmare?

Not quite, though close. Monday night I tried to connect to the server of my agency and the computer quit on me. Fine, reboot, well, no. “Fatal hard drive failure. Please exchange.” I tried to back-up, but you can guess, to no avail. To my dismay actually, since I had pushed backing-up to the end of my list for a considerably amount of weeks. (I learned my lesson, don’t worry.)

Tuesday featured a meeting with a client and on the way to Dortmund I called my office in Hamburg to find out the closest Mac support. Before lunch break I had a service appointment scheduled for noon the next day, they even sent me the route via e-mail.
I arrived at NewCompetence’s offices on time, they took my 12” Powerbook to the shop, gave me coffee, water, and a Mac mini to work with. The hard drive exchange (including loading up the OS) took three hours during which I worked the phones with insurance and clients.

I realise that this is not really a reason why Mac machines are better than Dell, but of course everything is about your service experience.
NewCompetence made me feel like I was a customer they value, not one who was disrupting their day. From the guy who took my call and made sure he had a person in the work shop ready just for me, to the lady at the reception who let me use her fax machine and got me coffee – they knew I was suffering inside because my laptop was broken and acted like it was their duty to help me out of this funk. Mind you, I was a first-time customer there, though certainly not last-time. Next in line is a back-up drive…