[slewis]

Sounds miserable. If they'd give you a loaner for the duration it'd be a little better.

I and others have recently had employees at the Apple store encourage us to utilize their no restocking fee policy to effectively get a "free" loaner laptop while ours were under repair.

Maybe Apple should encourage people to do this even when they're having computers from other manufacturers repaired. How often do people end up just keeping and paying for these "free" loaners... ?

Edit: loner -> loaner, Thanks ColinWright!

[ColinWright]

Not to be "that guy", but you mean "loaner" as in "something on loan", rather than "loner", which is "someone that prefers to be alone."

Having just come back from a conference where I was humbled by the other delegates' ability to speak English, I was hesitating to offer corrections. However, I was told in no uncertain terms that they wanted to improve, so provided it didn't interrupt flow, I offered corrections. I hope you feel the same. I'm also happy to delete this comment once I know you've seen it, thus helping flow.

[Samuel_Michon]

Definately! More folks should loose there inhabitions and speak up. If noone points out grammer and spelling errors, than how will people ever learn? I think your a saint, its really grate that you took the time to right this down. Thanks alot.

Also: http://theoatmeal.com/comics/misspelling

[ColinWright]

Translation: it doesn't matter how you spell, or how you write, it's the message that counts, so as long as people can make sense of it, you're OK. After all, there's no such thing as correct spelling or grammar, so feel free to do anything you like.

Obvservation: there are people - like myself - who don't read phonetically. Spelling such as in your (clearly ironic) reply just serve to slow my reading and make it less likely that I'll care about what you say. If it's your intention deliberately to alienate a portion of your possible audience, then by all means use whatever spelling you like.

This will degenerate into the usual pointless debate, so just let me assert that I'm not a grammar nazi, and I don't claim there is "one true language". I simply offer the point of view that some spellings will make your writing less effective for some of your possible audience.

[Samuel_Michon]

I was just poking fun, I completely agree with you. I work in publishing: editing is a major part of my job. My mom is an author, my dad is a literary agent. Friends used to joke that I was born with a red pencil in in my hand – that was before I learned not to correct their spelling without being asked to do so. You can be always right, believing you're very helpful, and end up with very few friends ;)

[auctiontheory]

Friends are are overrated.

[eru]

Unfortunately, corrections don't help people improve.

Consuming language (reading, listening) does. Producing and getting corrected doesn't.

I can dig out some sources for that, if you are interested.

[ColinWright]

That's interesting - the people I was talking with made a point of using the corrected version multiple times over a short space of time, and seemed to assimilate the change. Anedotes aren't data though - if you have evidence to contradict that observation I'd be interested to see it - yes.

Thanks.

Added in edit: you were downvoted - I don't know why, so I've upvoted you.

[eru]

Thanks for your interest. I mostly learned about this from a friend of mine, and haven't read the articles myself. His first language is English and he's using those insights to learn Mandarin, and even moved from England to Taiwan for that endeavour. I searched for a few keywoards I rememembered from our discussions and found that the Wikipedia page about the Comprehension approach (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comprehension_approach) looks like a good starting point. Also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Input_hypothesis and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silent_period

If you decide to read through the research papers linked from the Wikipedia articles (or even if you just read the Wikipedia articles), please feel free to drop me a line for some discussion. My email-address is in my profile.

[slewis]

Yup thanks! Just a pre-coffee brain fart.

[ColinWright]

Cool - no problem, and thanks for the reply.

[Samuel_Michon]

Great advice. Since OP wants a 13" notebook with a high res display, he might want to look into getting a 13" retina MacBook Pro. In Italy, that model costs Euro 1530, which is in the same range as the DELL he bought.

OP: if you can swing it, get yourself a Mac and see if you enjoy using it. If you don't, you can return it if when DELL fixes your notebook. Also, there are 12 Apple Stores in Italy. If you happen to live near one, service and support is a lot easier and more direct.

http://www.apple.com/macbook-pro/features-retina/

http://www.apple.com/retail/storelist/

[Macha]

The entry 13" Retina MBP costs €1530. (€1550 here for some reason). The comparable one (256GB SSD, better CPU) costs €1730. [1]

In comparison, the Dell one is €1400. €300 is a significant price difference IMO. Of course, they're not entirely the same. The Dell one still has a better CPU, the Apple one has a higher res display. The Apple one obviously comes with OS X, which could mean an extra €100 for a Windows license if he really needs it. Then again, his site [3] indicates that his previous computer was a Macbook which he ran Linux on, so I guess it's irrelevant.

[1]: http://www.apple.com/it/macbook-pro/specs-retina/ [2]: http://www.dell.com/it/p/xps-13-l321x-mlk/pd?oc=n0013z26&... [3]: http://volpino.github.io/#home

[fox91]

Yes, the comparable macbook is much more expensive :( (and not so tiny though)

[shadeslayer]

Oddly enough the Apple repair center near my home refused to give me something that I could work with till they repaired my dying hard disk.