It has almost been two years since I made the leap into the macworld. I was convinced a friend who had a ibook, which was of great quality and had the amazing tiger os. I finally bought a macbook in July of 2006 and was amazed with the laptop. I instantly became an apple fanatic, which eventually lead to my iphone purchase. It helped that I was never a windows/pc fan because of the inefficiencies with the windows os.
However, my transition into the macworld was not a smooth one. The macbook worked great until I got the random shutdown problem two month in, which lasted about a month until the firmware update came out. Soon after the random shut down problem was fixed I started to notice discoloration in my top cover. Since it was not a huge problem I never took the mb in because it was a known issue and I still had applecare. Later that month my mb started to randomly shutdown again and after two visits to the genius bar it was found that my Ram needed to be forcefully pushed into the slots to get them seated again (OEM ram never touched until then). About five months into my ownership I started to notice cracking along the edges of the top cover. I figured that since I was in the midst of finals I would wait to replace the top cover. After the six month of ownership my battery suddenly stopped working. I took it in and Applecare gave me a new battery and sent me on my way (They had not acknowledge the problem yet.)
Up to this point I was still happy with my mb and Applecare. I intended to renew my applecare for the next two years but made the fatal mistake of not knowing that I must renew my applecare during the 1st year period. School ended and I got distracted during summer. As I went to go buy applecare in August of 2007 I was told that it would not work for my mb because it was already out of its one year applecare. Just a month later my Fujitsu hard drive failed only after a little more than a month past a year of ownership. Being in college and in need of a laptop I sucked it up and replaced the hard drive with a Western Digital one.
Fast forward to Feb 2008 I finally got my top cover replaced out of warranty. I am grateful that apple decided to do this. But a little less than two weeks after having it replaced it is starting to get dirty again. I can live with the dirty top cover but now the new problem that is bothering me is my lcd. It started a few days ago where the screen would not go to full brightness. I press f2/increase brightness button until it reaches its max on the indicator but even then the screen seemed to only be at mid level brightness. I placed it side by side with my friends macbook (CD not C2D) and it was significantly dimmer. I would have to restart the computer for the brightness to be reset. Now today while my screen was auto dimming during idle use the screen started to flicker between full brightness and auto dim mode. I restarted my computer and now the flickering happens when I am normally using the computer. It is causing strain on my eyes because the screen flickers between brightness modes about every 30 seconds. Some times slightly changes but some times drastic changes. Being out of warranty I am SOL. I know many other people have had problems with their macbook's but I just wanted to share my experiences with potential buyers.
To summarize it all up I am pleased with Apple's OSs but I am greatly turned off by the quality of their hardware. Don't get me wrong I am not saying there aren't problems with Apple's OSs but this thread is just about my macbook. My friend with the ibook who got me into macs bought a macbook before me has had plenty problems with Leopard. Many of the hardware problems I have listed are also widespread problems, but the only one that Apple seems to openly acknowledges is the battery one. When I purchased a mac I was hoping to avoid Dell type problems. In some ways I did: I still have all my keys on my keyboard, my screen is still attached to my laptop, my battery hasn't blown up, and my power supply hasn't blown up YET. But for some reason I expected more. I expected reliability and efficiency but all these problems that seem to keep on coming up makes me wonder if Leopard is really worth all these hardware troubles. I was pleased with Jobs when he issued the $100 refund for early iphone adaptors when he didn't have to. But my experiences with my mb make me hesitant to purchase another apple computer. To be honest I was still very happy with my mb until this lcd problem. I was recommending apple computers to everyone that would listen but after taking a step back and looking at all the troubles others and I have had it makes me really wonder if its worth it?
However, my transition into the macworld was not a smooth one. The macbook worked great until I got the random shutdown problem two month in, which lasted about a month until the firmware update came out. Soon after the random shut down problem was fixed I started to notice discoloration in my top cover. Since it was not a huge problem I never took the mb in because it was a known issue and I still had applecare. Later that month my mb started to randomly shutdown again and after two visits to the genius bar it was found that my Ram needed to be forcefully pushed into the slots to get them seated again (OEM ram never touched until then). About five months into my ownership I started to notice cracking along the edges of the top cover. I figured that since I was in the midst of finals I would wait to replace the top cover. After the six month of ownership my battery suddenly stopped working. I took it in and Applecare gave me a new battery and sent me on my way (They had not acknowledge the problem yet.)
Up to this point I was still happy with my mb and Applecare. I intended to renew my applecare for the next two years but made the fatal mistake of not knowing that I must renew my applecare during the 1st year period. School ended and I got distracted during summer. As I went to go buy applecare in August of 2007 I was told that it would not work for my mb because it was already out of its one year applecare. Just a month later my Fujitsu hard drive failed only after a little more than a month past a year of ownership. Being in college and in need of a laptop I sucked it up and replaced the hard drive with a Western Digital one.
Fast forward to Feb 2008 I finally got my top cover replaced out of warranty. I am grateful that apple decided to do this. But a little less than two weeks after having it replaced it is starting to get dirty again. I can live with the dirty top cover but now the new problem that is bothering me is my lcd. It started a few days ago where the screen would not go to full brightness. I press f2/increase brightness button until it reaches its max on the indicator but even then the screen seemed to only be at mid level brightness. I placed it side by side with my friends macbook (CD not C2D) and it was significantly dimmer. I would have to restart the computer for the brightness to be reset. Now today while my screen was auto dimming during idle use the screen started to flicker between full brightness and auto dim mode. I restarted my computer and now the flickering happens when I am normally using the computer. It is causing strain on my eyes because the screen flickers between brightness modes about every 30 seconds. Some times slightly changes but some times drastic changes. Being out of warranty I am SOL. I know many other people have had problems with their macbook's but I just wanted to share my experiences with potential buyers.
To summarize it all up I am pleased with Apple's OSs but I am greatly turned off by the quality of their hardware. Don't get me wrong I am not saying there aren't problems with Apple's OSs but this thread is just about my macbook. My friend with the ibook who got me into macs bought a macbook before me has had plenty problems with Leopard. Many of the hardware problems I have listed are also widespread problems, but the only one that Apple seems to openly acknowledges is the battery one. When I purchased a mac I was hoping to avoid Dell type problems. In some ways I did: I still have all my keys on my keyboard, my screen is still attached to my laptop, my battery hasn't blown up, and my power supply hasn't blown up YET. But for some reason I expected more. I expected reliability and efficiency but all these problems that seem to keep on coming up makes me wonder if Leopard is really worth all these hardware troubles. I was pleased with Jobs when he issued the $100 refund for early iphone adaptors when he didn't have to. But my experiences with my mb make me hesitant to purchase another apple computer. To be honest I was still very happy with my mb until this lcd problem. I was recommending apple computers to everyone that would listen but after taking a step back and looking at all the troubles others and I have had it makes me really wonder if its worth it?
