sick of this autorestart garbage

[plunar]

my wife lost 2 days worth of work yesterday when the macbook just restarted by itself when she closed the lid. just like it's been doing for 2 months.

this is ridiculous. the apple store said it's fine, cause i couldn't reproduce the issue on the spot. i did not blow nearly $2000 for this kind of service and product.

apple is losing a 10 year customer with this.

 

[livingfortoday]

She didn't save anything for two days straight?

 

[dopey220]

She didn't save anything for two days straight?

Yeah, she probably should have. It's uncool that Apple won't replace a clearly defective product, but you should still save your work every few minutes at least.

 

[ezzie]

i understand that this is frustrating, and if it were me, i'd call applecare and demand that they remedy the situation...

but doesn't your wife save her files? if she went two days without saving her work, then i'd say that's the first problem to be worked on.

EDIT: yeah, what everyone else said.

 

[plunar]

do YOU want tell her it's her fault?

yes, better save habits she should have. but the fact of the matter is that this shouldn't have happened to begin with.

I am going to file a claim with the BBB over this. Lately too the MacBook has been making little jet engine like noises.... not sure if this is the "whine" that people have been moaning about. but again, it happens so sporadically that it never happens at the apple store, and hence, the genius' reply is "looks fine to me."

Worthless. completely worthless. My father has dell and they actually sent someone to visit his home - on a weekend - and fix his machine on the spot. free of charge.

 

[ezzie]

sure....i will tell her she should have better save habits.

i think we've all lost very important work at some point for one reason or another. it happened to me a time or two, and i starting saving more often, manually.

as far as the issues with your MB, do you have applecare? if you do, call applecare and forget about the apple store. if you've already called, call again and politely demand that something be done.

how long have you had this machine? can you link the issues with your MB to documented problems with similar aged MB's?

 

[t1937r0]

Does the macbook have the latest firmware version?

 

[plunar]

the purchase date was dec 4. past the 90 day phone period.

is this a known issue? if i could walk in with some supporting documentation, that may prove more fruitful.

 

[Helianthus]

She didnt save for TWO DAYS? Get her into the habit of saving once every few hours. Even on my desktop thats on 24/7, I save everything when I finish a session. Now why someone doesn't save often on a laptop that has a persisting autorestart problem is beyond me...

It sucks about your problem and they should be obligated to fix it for you but you must admit, any loss could have been easily avoided.

 

[shecky]

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=304308

and not to be a prick, but its a good thing this happened to your wife; now she has learned her lesson and will save her work a lot more often. its a hard lesson, but one well worth learning.

 

[plunar]

about the save:

she has previously relied on the ms office autosave, which we have just learned, is disabled when you are saving to a drive that office is not installed on (read: idisk). way to go ms. at least they have an autosave; more than you can say for iwork. but off topic.

 

[RedTomato]

Most pro programs will have auto-save, tho they may not always be turned on. I have MS Word set to save my typing every 5 minutes.

Mail.app also seems to save my drafts every few minutes (came back from a crash, and saw my draft was still there minus the last couple of words.)

I think Photoshop can be set to auto-save a history of your recent changes, but don't ask me how - I don't use it for paying work, so I haven't investigated the auto-save.

 

[plunar]

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=304308

and not to be a prick, but its a good thing this happened to your wife; now she has learned her lesson and will save her work a lot more often. its a hard lesson, but one well worth learning.

it says my computer does not need the update.

 

[plunar]

Most pro programs will have auto-save, tho they may not always be turned on. I have MS Word set to save my typing every 5 minutes.

Mail.app also seems to save my drafts every few minutes (came back from a crash, and saw my draft was still there minus the last couple of words.)

I think Photoshop can be set to auto-save a history of your recent changes, but don't ask me how - I don't use it for paying work, so I haven't investigated the auto-save.

I've confirmed this: office autorecover backup is set to every 10 minutes. it works. however, it doesn't work when the file is stored on an idisk. don't know why; it just doesn't.

 

[Bibulous]

Might be a long shot, but check the trash for any recovered files, I have found Office file in it before after a sudden shut down or restart.

 

[Cybergypsy]

Yep My two Macbook had that problem, Went back to a PC for a while, to have a total of 4 bad Macs in 6 months all bought from Apple....well I am going to wait a while myself......good luck

 

[killmoms]

Taking it into the Apple Store for a non-reproducible issue is not beneficial. Of course they'll want to see it happen. You need to call AppleCare and tell them about the problem. They'll be much more likely to take it in, since this has been an issue with other MacBooks.

 

[GimmeSlack12]

the purchase date was dec 4. past the 90 day phone period.

is this a known issue? if i could walk in with some supporting documentation, that may prove more fruitful.

Hey you bought it on my birthday, maybe it's my fault then.

I hear ya on the restart issue, that's pretty stupid. But I will reinforce the idea to save your work. In theory computers should never mess up (or do anything we don't tell them to do). But we all are aware that this isn't the case.

 

[BlackMax]

do YOU want tell her it's her fault?

My wife had a similar thing happen to her and the first thing I asked her when she came to me for assistance was "Where is your backup"? At which point she gave me that deer in the headlight look

Now she not only frequently saves to local disk, but burns her important items to DVD each week. It is a hard lesson to learn, but there's no better teacher than losing all your hard work in a split second. Computers are machines and as such are prone to failure. All you can do to mitigate the fallout of such failures is to make frequent backups.

 

[dpaanlka]

Aren't the jet engine noises the fans? My moms MacBook Pro does this now and then too. Hers never shuts off or anything crazy though - it's been working perfectly since she bought it. And its a CoreDuo (not C2D).

 

[heehee]

Apple + s is your friend. I'm so used to saving right now I just hit those keys every minute or so. Also, you should back up your files periodically. Any computer is going to have problems, you can't expect everything to work all of the time.

 

[CanadaRAM]

Dear Mrs. Plunar

A suggestion for a safer method of creating files.

1) Name each blank document: When you open a new document, get in the habit of immediately giving it a name and saving it to a sensible location on your hard drive (I like creating folders on my hard drive with client names and job descriptions, for example). Then, as you work you just have to hit Command-S periodically to save your work, it becomes second nature.

2) Never work on a file in a remote location: Whether it is a USB flash disk, floppy/zip drive, or an online volume such as iDisk, or a network attached volume, don't use it for primary storage of the file you are working on.
Always save the file on your local hard disk, work on it there, and then copy the file to the remote location in the Finder when you are completed. If you are doing more work on an existing document, save a copy to your hard drive first and work on your local copy, then move it back.

3) Save incremental versions: This is an excellent opportunity to also implement a versioning system where you save As... successive updates with a version number or a date in the filename. This allows you to go back to an earlier version if the current one gets messed.

One good reason why to only work on local hard drive files, is that remote storage, virtual storage (disk images) and removeable storage devices can go away unpredictably, which can have serious consequences in document corruption.

Thanks,
Your friends on MR.

 

[phidauex]

There are two kinds of computer users:

1. Those who have lost data.
2. Those who will.

This has always been true, and will forever be true. At least she just lost two days of work, instead of having your house burn down and destroy the computer and the backups on the other side of the house like what happened to a friend of mine. Diligent backups, but all in the same home...

Sometimes it just happens. Don't get angry, she's just "joined the club" that will eventually include every computer user. Just take it as an opportunity to get better at saving and creating backups. Any computer can have a problem, Mac or Dell or whatever. You still need the same habits.

peace,
sam

 

[jsw]

While I understand the need to backup files, I much more appreciate the replies here regarding replacement of the MacBook and steps to take in that direction.

Regardless of how perfect someone's backup plan is, a laptop should not reboot when the lid is closed.

 

[Skrilla™]

It seems there are some who have had really bad luck with these things. My MacBook is my first Apple computer, and I can tell you if I had any of these problems it would be out the door and it would be my last Apple purchase of any kind! These kind of problems have no excuse.