True on the first part, but as the old adage goes, "You get what you pay for." Two years of solid backpack and college campus abuse on my 12" PowerBook, and nary a hiccup. As for the second part, use the Apple website store. You can still get a
government discount (Active Military), and free shipping.
I have no idea what "patch" you're talking about, as MS makes a
Mac-native version of Office. It is fully compatible with all standard MS Office formats, MS Entourage is, in many ways, much better than MS Outlook, it has all the features that MS Office for Windows has (including macro and VBasic support), and then some. All this wrapped in a beautiful Aqua GUI. Okay, now that was geeky. Sorry.
Try one yourself for 30 days, and you won't need
me to convince you. The products do that themselves.
Possible, if this thingy is supplying improper voltages, or is shunted (shorted) somewhere--might mess up the firmware. Restore the firmware as recommended above, don't use this connector thingy for about a month, and see if the problem resurfaces. If not, it's prolly that thingy.