Tuesday November 07, 2006

A quick note for those who might be bitten by a problem that got me today.

When I upgraded OpenOffice to 2.0.4 on my Mac Book Pro today, it wouldn't run. The OpenOffice menu bar would appear, then the splash screen...and then nothing. I repeated the installation (interesting that isn't taken as a sign of insanity in our business) with the same result.

Our very active and helpful Sun Mac community fixed the problem by sending me to this information. Apparently there is a bad interaction between Apple's latest X11 version and OpenOffice. Sounds like it might be an Apple problem. In any case, I issued the two specified commands and then OO was able to start and complete its installation procedure. OO is once again running well on my laptop.

My Mac Book Pro returned home on Friday from its second trip back to Apple for repairs. They replaced the right fan assembly to fix the fast and soft clicking sound I had heard from the area of the Delete key. They also replaced the LCD screen at my request since it had several large black areas (dust or dirt behind the glass) that had been present since I received the unit.

• Mailed DHL (OfficeMAX) 27-Oct-2006)
• Product received by repair center (30-Oct-2006)
• On hold - Part on order (30-Oct-2006)
• Repair completed (02-Nov-2006)
• Product return pending (02-Nov-2006)
• Delivered by DHL 03-Nov-2006

Very good turnaround time given that I included a note with the laptop asking them to look at the screen and they therefore didn't know in advance that they'd need a replacement, which I assume accounts for the few days delay.