The best one I had was not really the same class (it was my grandmother.) She complained that one day her iBook just stopped running, and nothing she could do could get it running again. I tried walking her through various things, but none of them worked. It appeared that the power system went kaput. (She lives in Arizona, I live in Oregon, so it was all 'over-the-phone')

So she goes out and buys a new iMac (she realized she didn't really need a portable anymore.) My dad went down there to hook the iMac up for her, and it turns out that while the COMPUTER end of the power cord was plugged in, and the WALL end was plugged in, but the wall cord had come loose from the brick! Her old iBook worked just fine, after all. (Our best guess is that she kicked the cord apart under the desk, and when the battery died, the computer died. Since it didn't die the instant she kicked the cord, she didn't notice the cause/effect link.)