MBP Sorely Dissapointed, Me or it ?

Ok, I have just joined MacRumours, because every time something doesn't work, when I search, posts from MacRumours came up, so I joined.

But why am I searching, I am searching because I have a Macbook Pro (7,1)that has become so unreliable, it is getting to the point I no longer trust it for my work and that because of an annoying spinning beach ball, which when that appears, the whole machine just freezes and I can do nothing to get out of it, or even save my work prior to turning it off for a reset.

So, just what is happening, is it the machine or my inability to use it ?

Now, I did read elsewhere that symptoms similar to mine others had reported by others, with further suggestion that there is a less than impressive performing chipset that Apple used in these machines and now no longer uses, but is this the problem I have, I just don't know.

Right now the MBP is sitting in the corner frozen again with a load of work on it that I can do nothing with except lose as the spinning beach ball is happily spinning away and I am using to type this my old vista disaster pc, which is more reliable despite the computer being somewhat battered.

This vistaster is the reason I migrated to Mac and as I have a learning disability, macs were supposed to be better for such users, which on the whole I did find it more intuitive, but no good if the thing doesn't work, so what do I do ?

No Genius Bar in my locale and no one to consult and should this be happening with such a new well looked after machine. The fault first started about six months ago and since has got worse, but I am clueless and very unhappy

What can I do regards the work I always lose and the problem itself ?

Thanks for the reply,

So after nearly two hours of waiting, I have given up and must lose my work again, but trying to quit the application, quit doesnt work, neither does force quit, so my only option is to turn the thing off, which I know doesn't do good things for the registry and can only add yet more problems for the future, but it is the only way for now.

But a clue perhaps, this kind of problem appears to be happening the most when working online and in the past turning off airport and turning it back on again sometimes sorted the probem out, so I wonder. I did wonder about choice of browser and what they demand in resources, so changed from using firefox and safari to using chrome, everything was fine for a while, then the problems started again despite me clearing browsing data. I have also noticed the machine appears to be running hotter with more use of the internal fan. But other programs appear to have become corrupted, MS office and Adobe CS5, corrupted in that they freeze and collapse often with stuff my old pentium 2 could easily handle. So is it a resource issue, especially as when on the net, the report I get before a freeze up, is pages have become unresponsive with the option to wait or kill, which I can never do because of the old beach ball.

But, it is on to Apple I suppose and hopefully they can sort it out, but will they honour a request for a machine which I have had for eighteen months ?

See, with being brought up on pc's I have an idea what goes on with them when they go wrong and can usually sort them out, but this thing, I am clueless, it is as if it is alien.


But because of the problems I have with the MBP, I never keep anything on the machine other than the programs, all my images get saved to either the external drive or a dvd, despite the failure to verify error report, but the annoying thing is the work I am doing on the machine getting lost.

Oh and I have virus Barrier x6 installed, up to date and it declares nothing, so I don't suspect malicious attack, especially so as Mac's generally are not susceptible to it

Is there any maintenance I can do on this thing, defragging and disc clean ups ?

But thanks anyway for the advice.

Ok, some further information;

Last night after finally giving up and losing all my work again, I kicked off all my files be that images, video and word documents, which was no more than 1.5 gb as as a rule due to the instabilty I am experiencing nothing important stays on the machine so in theory the MBP should be running light and fast, which it did for a while giving me what has turned out to be a false sense of confidence in it, so off I went and carried on with my work only for the problem to happen again and this time the activity monitor was running and I could see it was not a demand of resources that was causing the problem as that thing was on the bottom two bars, but what was evident was the internet connection as I was working online again with one tab open in Chrome, the outgoing and incoming traffic had fallen to zero, so my internet was then suspect. So after blasting my provider, I checked the access with the vista pc, and lo and behold it flew along. So the problem is the MBP's internet connectivity, which would explain why turning airport off and on again sometimes cured the hang ups, but not lately, the process froze altogether with nothing that will work to force the process to quit and having researched kill processes, none of them work, the MBP is totally locked again with more work that will have to be lost, but at least I now know where the problem is, Airport, the MBP's internet connectivity, so onto Apple I think, as this fault it seems is being reported by others. As I take my MBP with me when I travel to friends places, and use their wireless, which the MBP connects to without a problem I have noticed the machine was unstable at their locations too, so it is not my connection, it is the Mac

Oh, as to the work I lose, it is just internet forum replies, much the same as I am doing here, surely a MBP is capable of that, but a clue perhaps, when I reply and insert a link to another website, the machine momentarily freezes, just for a second, but enough to notice and I have noticed.

But as to resources, I do need more RAM for the stuff I do offline, that will soon be sorted out when the internet issue is corrected. And regards the virus barrier, yes, maybe it will be kicked off later, but for now the internet issue concerns me most.