MacBook World Tour

Its been a while, but to be honest I've not been up to a great deal worth telling you about.
I did however order a new laptop (I'm typing on it right now, you can tell cant you) from Apple.
I know, slightly over exuberant, but you only live once,  or not, see other post Death, what is it good for!
We, as I'm sure you know, Apple pride themselves on the recycle value of their laptops, even the glass is green friendly. So, knowing all this imagine my surprise when upon ordering my MacBook I'm given an estimated delivery of 12 days, a  little long for a standard configuration, I only added two items of software. Still, what do I know about these things, Its bound to turn up earlier so I'll just sit back and wait.
Around the 9th August I get the email I was waiting for, your product has shipped. Get in there, not long now, looks like the estimate of 12 day was just covering bases in case of delays.
The email also states that you can track via the carriers on line site, live tracking. I'll have some of that, so a quick copy and paste of the delivery reference on the site and I'm in.
Right, where is it then, Manchester, or London, maybe even Ireland, if I had made a list of start points Shanghai would have been a little far down the list, but I would have been correct had I put Chinas largest city. It begs the question why? Why would a company so outwardly green ship a laptop, a stock laptop, half way around the planet. I sat back and watched my laptop journey towards me. Next stop, South Korea, man alive the bloody laptops having a better holiday than me, hope it brings me some photos. Well it was a fleeting visit to South Korea, but at least it got to visit. Next stop Kazakhstan, really! From there my Mac flew to Warsaw in Poland, onwards from there after a quick night stop over to Germany. What a gas, its been to more bleedin places than I have, free post as well. A weekend stop in Germany, maybe a night out at a local nightclub, and then back to the airport hotel for a night cap.
It then arrived, via Stansted and Chelmsford, completely knackered, but with a hell of a tan.
Well when it got to Germany I thought I should phone Apple to vent my splene regarding the awful waste of resources, shipping it from China.
I told them that I had bought an item that you would imagine was in stock at every Apple store in the UK, what they told me defied belief. The chap at the other end of the phone told me that I had not ordered a stock item due to the software I wanted preloaded, this meant that it needed shipping from China.
Me: Well if thats the case there was little point in me ordering the laptop then was there!
Bloke: Why?
Me: Well if every time I need to put software on it it needs to go back to China, as thats the only place where you have people qualified to instal software I'll never get a chance to use it.
Bloke: No, its just that....
Me: I know, I know, but its truly pathetic that it needs to be sent so far, just because it has software installed.
Bloke: I'm sorry about the fact you are unhappy with the service.
Well, to make a short story long I got a bit of a deal at the end, due to me being a moaning git.

There were no holiday snaps, no tales of getting off with some cheap Tablet, no fornicating with netbooks, nope, it would appear to have behaved impeccably on its journey.
So, as a warning to all, by all means get a MacBook, they are great, just dont get the software pre loaded, unless you live in Shanghai, in which case your new laptop will be with you almost before you order it.
The above is meant in no way to assume that all of Apples delivery services are this poor, its just my personal experience, and to be fair, they apologised financially at the end, and lets be honest, we all love a freebie.

One last thing before I go, and you dont hear from me for weeks again, If you can help The Thespians, see previous blog update, that would be great. They are nearly halfway towards their goal.

Cheers