Dear Swordmaker,
The machine itself was the reason I purchased it. I had been married to a non-technically minded wife, whereas I had been involved with computers from the days of the Univac 1050-II data processing equipment.
The ‘rub’ was that, I was a subscriber to AOL, and AOL kept increasing it’s version numbers, and ‘size needed’ requirements, exponentially to where I had to keep taking the processor to the get-on-the rug-and-face-North Apple techni-priests for greater RAM installations. No matter how much electronic catechism I evoked, I was just another schlump to a 20-ish fuzz-moustached Apple employee, beholden to them for the survival of the machine, while under purchased extended warranty.
I have worked with Fortran77, hexidecimal machine code, assembly language, built my own computer, HP-1B Basic, Dos 5, Dos 6, Windows 3.1, before I moved and purchased the brand new LC475 from an office store, in 1994. I don’t recall the ‘OS’ number. I have since owned a Win98Se laptop, (which with me survived Hurricane Katrina), a WinXP laptop, and now a Win7 machine.
I was servicing Macs back then and the lC475 came with 4MB. It was one of the most expandable of the Macintosh lines and being a pizza box style, easily done by the consumer. It had just one easily reached RAM slot on the motherboard. The case was easily opened by the means of spring catches at the rear. NOTHING had to be removed to reach the memory. A reset switch on the motherboard after memory change needed to be pushed, IIRC, and the cover replaced. WHY would you, with your experience, need to have any help at all to exchange a single 72 pin SIMM????
Sorry, but you were NOT talking to an Apple employee, since at that time, did Apple have any Apple stores for you to meet one. You would have been at a 3rd party store that was merely an "authorized" dealer and repair station. Apple did not open it's first Apple Store until May of 2001. At that time, many of those "dealers," especially the big box stores and office dealers, looked down their collective noses at Apple users and were not averse to letting the users know it. You were right in the middle of that time. . . and it was the PRIME reason that Steve Jobs made the decision that Apple had to open their own stores. . . to get around that problem. Now according to JD Powers, Apple has had the best customer satisfaction record in the world.
And with all those technical skills, you couldn’t install your own RAM? I’m also a little bewildered by where you found “ a 20-ish fuzz-moustached Apple employee” to install it for you; the first Apple Store didn’t open until 2001.