Well, apparently it happens to the best of us. Our beloved technological gift breaks. Something happens, a trip down a flight of stairs, a roughly handled bag, or a run in with a cup of soda. Well for me, it was nothing.
My beloved laptop, serving me well into the night, resting next to my bed until I powered it off for an evening's sleep, was in perfect condition. Purring with fans and the chachunk chachunk of hard drives seeking. Until the following evening when it cried out, Nevermore!
It was rather upsetting, completely dead. No response to power buttons, PMU zappings, or harshly spoken words. The only sign of life was a glow from the power adapter and a light from the battery reading that it was charged.
So, it was a trip to the Apple Store, beloved icon of black t-shirted nerds and iPods located in the heart of the King of Prussia Mall. Waiting for an hour, pacing back and forth. I checked to make sure that it still wouldn't start up. That would be embarrassing. Thankfully? it was as dead as earlier.
I met a very gruff and sun burned man by the name of Terry Pritchard. The normal over the counter niceties ensued until he had diagnosed the problem. It was dead.
A fact I had concluded earlier, but his diagnosis went on. The logic board of my powerbook had failed. Never to beat power into the CPU again, or to coarse gigabytes of porn through its IDE interface. The condition, terminal. No hope of repair. The only solution was complete replacement of the Logic board.. the 'heart' of my laptop.
Thanks to my AppleCare warranty, however, the part was now on order, and would be installed for free as soon as it arrived. Wonderful. What's the charge sir?
With your AppleCare, we'll take care of everything.
Upon receipt of the $0.00 bill, and looking at the included costs that were covered totaling a whopping $1000, I realized that I had more than paid for the AppleCare warranty and any other I may buy in the future. I may even have paid for any technological warranty I had ever purchased.
Go me!