Rock and a hard place

So what the hell do I do?

They replaced Cassandra's LCD screen, which made the problem less acute, but didn't get rid of the problem. She still fritzes when I jar her, or try to move her screen - which is fine but that means I don't dare move her while working on her and also means that she's not stable and could fritz at any time.

Which leads me to think that it's the logic board that is the problem as diagnosed earlier - which they didn't replace. Now, if I got the local AppleCenter (at Funan) to replace the logic board it won't be covered by the shop warranty, and that'll cost me probably over S$1000. If I send it back to Best-Denki (who hold the shop warranty), they'll take another fucking month and probably won't solve the problem again - and that month I don't have.

Do I live with the problem? Buy a new Powerbook? Pay the S$1000?

The alternative my gut is leading me to is to say, live with the problem until I finish up what I need to finish using Cassandra, pay the local AppleCenter the S$1000 to fix her, forget getting an iMac, and just buy/build a PC when I reach the US. Maybe this is God's usual un-subtle way of telling me to forget the iMac indulgence.

Update

In a desperate act of circumventing the bureaucracy entirely, I just went down to the AppleCenter at Ang Mo Kio and basically asked them why the problem still persisted when they were supposed to fix it, on the off chance they would be embarassed enough to rectify it no questions asked. By a stroke of luck, that worked - they replaced the LCD screen they just replaced, and now Cassandra seems to be working fine. Cross your fingers and hopefully that will be the last of the component problems.

To explain my warranty problems just so everyone's unconfused as to why the warranty isn't that simple:

When I bought Cassandra in November 2001, it was from a chain store known as Best-Denki. Now, the Apple warranty lasted for one year only, and I had a choice of getting the AppleCare Protection plan which would extend the warranty to three years or, as I eventually got suckered into doing, going with the Best-Denki in-house warranty plan which was five years.

Cassandra's Apple warranty ran out in November 2002. That means that Apple doesn't cover repairs anymore, and to get repairs done, I would have to give her over to Best-Denki, who would then liaise with Apple as to the repairs. In other words, Apple would still repair Cassandra, but it's Best-Denki who would pay them.

Which leads to this bureaucratic tangle, since Best-Denki will do its level best not to pay out on their warranty, and Apple won't fix the components without guaranteed payment from Best-Denki. That's why repairing Cassandra was never as simple as bringing her to Apple - she isn't covered by their warranty anymore.

I suppose the situation is akin to a HMO.

In the meantime, I apologize unreservedly to people I did or may have snapped at yesterday like a snappy turtle thing. What with Cassandra and having to haul ass down to the shippers to count every thing I'm shipping over, plus deadline doom on stuff for work coming down all on the same goddamn day... I'm sorry, it had to go somewhere.