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Usually when you're one of the first batches of people to buy a new item launch, you have a good chance of running into these kinds of issues. I guess the risk you have to take to have the latest and greatest before most other people do.

There is also one Apple specific issue. Many people buy Apple products ASAP because they want to sell them before the next upgrade (to maximize resale value). It's a stupid idea but a popular one nonetheless.
 
+1 check the handbrake encoding test thread from a few days ago. My $500 AMD system laid waste to every imac and MBP in the thread. If you want a pretty computer you buy an imac, but If you want an affordable workhorse that will lap the competition you BYOS.

my work issues core i5-460 lenovo is a handbrake machine. compared to my old HP centrino duo laptop it is lighting fast at encoding movies

another issue is that the SNB CPU's have hardware support for transcoding video but OS X doesn't take advantage of it. Apple will probably add it in Lion and charge you money for it
 
Have the machine in my sig, have photobooth open, have 8 yes > /dev/null & running and machine is fine, temps only get to 84C or so... It is running as I post this. This is NOT happening to all machines, this is likely due to (as said before) piss poor thermal paste applications - we all know the CPU's will throttle/shutdown before they melt themselves, my guess is that is what is happening here.

same here 8 times dev null for about 10 minutes now and abou 86 °C @ 6200 RPM with the fans at an 2,2ghz with 6750M machine 8GB Samsung RAM ( external monitor connected and bootcamp is present on hdd )
 
still no problems here but maybe this is caused by having skype running all the time so no discrete graphic in use at all
 
Given the inconsistent replies about the reproducibility of this problem I would say that this was about quality control in manufacturing. Many of us don't have this problem. It's unfortunate that some of you do, but my guess is that only a small percentage of 2011 mbp owners are experiencing this.

Even BMWs have their share of issues. That's life in the luxury world.
 
Hmm, yeah the paste issue isn't new with Macs but it's never a good feeling to know it could be in your machine.

It certainly would explain all the inconsistent results - some can easily crash theirs, some report no issues.

I've looked at plenty of pictures of when a heatsink is removed, like reviews of various PC video cards, and haven't seen anything close to the horrific application of thermal paste on the MBPs. Most manufacturers actually seem to have thermal paste applied correctly.

There is something seriously wrong if Apple don't address the manufacturing process as well, and just try to throttle things in software.
 
Given the inconsistent replies about the reproducibility of this problem I would say that this was about quality control in manufacturing. Many of us don't have this problem. It's unfortunate that some of you do, but my guess is that only a small percentage of 2011 mbp owners are experiencing this.

Even BMWs have their share of issues. That's life in the luxury world.

Cars also have a lot more components that laptop computers.
 
your point in regards to his post?

Laptop computers have orders of magnitude more components and points of failure than a car. (Yeah, cars have processors in them, but they are tiny compared to x86 processors and the RAM in laptop computers).
 
Given the inconsistent replies about the reproducibility of this problem I would say that this was about quality control in manufacturing. Many of us don't have this problem. It's unfortunate that some of you do, but my guess is that only a small percentage of 2011 mbp owners are experiencing this.

Even BMWs have their share of issues. That's life in the luxury world.

Now 6 machines from our office, 2 were replaced and the replacements do the same. Also stopped by the apple store, 3 there froze as well. Considering the numbers of machines that are having issues this seems bigger than the usual issues. Also a lot of the faults are intermittent, and some people reporting are using the base 2.0 systems which may be less susceptible. Mine was fine until handbrake and CINEMA 4D both killed it. Since then no faults even though I've been pushing it hard.

And if BMW has issues they usually do a recall..
 
Now 6 machines from our office, 2 were replaced and the replacements do the same. Also stopped by the apple store, 3 there froze as well. Considering the numbers of machines that are having issues this seems bigger than the usual issues. Also a lot of the faults are intermittent, and some people reporting are using the base 2.0 systems which may be less susceptible. Mine was fine until handbrake and CINEMA 4D both killed it. Since then no faults even though I've been pushing it hard.

And if BMW has issues they usually do a recall..

Apple does recalls... usually after 1-2 years (by then most Apple users have bought new hardware.)
 
Given the inconsistent replies about the reproducibility of this problem I would say that this was about quality control in manufacturing. Many of us don't have this problem. It's unfortunate that some of you do, but my guess is that only a small percentage of 2011 mbp owners are experiencing this.

Even BMWs have their share of issues. That's life in the luxury world.

I don't get it though, because I had issues, so I returned my MBP, and still have issues. If there are so many good computers and so few bad computers, what are the odds of me getting 2 bad eggs in a row? I read something about a guy who had 3.
 
Usually when you're one of the first batches of people to buy a new item launch, you have a good chance of running into these kinds of issues. I guess the risk you have to take to have the latest and greatest before most other people do.

You are probably right about that. My father was an automobile mechanic. He always told me to never buy the first year of a new model. I've seen that proven to be true a few times in the past when it came to cars and trucks. I suppose it might be true for computers as well.
 
I don't get it though, because I had issues, so I returned my MBP, and still have issues. If there are so many good computers and so few bad computers, what are the odds of me getting 2 bad eggs in a row? I read something about a guy who had 3.

exactly, i'm on my 2nd 17" as well
 
I don't get it though, because I had issues, so I returned my MBP, and still have issues. If there are so many good computers and so few bad computers, what are the odds of me getting 2 bad eggs in a row? I read something about a guy who had 3.

This issue affects the entire 6750M equipped lineup. The people reporting no problems are reporting falsely (think having multiple apps open means it is fine), are doing the tests wrong or are in denial.

I have tested 30 machines spanning different build dates, all of them have the issue.
 
I'm on a 2.3Ghz, 8GB G.Skill MBP, and the yes > /dev/null x 8 did not produce any crashes (this while having Chrome open with 14 tabs, and mail app), and neither did encoding a file to .m4v in Handbreak (though the file was only 800 mb so that might be a reason).

I did however experience freezing when running Pro Tools (with loads of tracks/VIs/etc) with Reason in rewire mode (with several modules) with my last RAM kit. Then, the computer would freeze, but sound would still be playing and caps-lock be active. With my new ram kit (same model from G.Skill), I have yet to reproduce this problem.

I haven't ran the sudo port install boost thing yet, though.
 
You are probably right about that. My father was an automobile mechanic. He always told me to never buy the first year of a new model. I've seen that proven to be true a few times in the past when it came to cars and trucks. I suppose it might be true for computers as well.

You're also not supposed to buy a car built on a Monday or Friday. :rolleyes:

My dad was a mechanic too and said, "Sometimes you just get a piece of *****."
 
Funny how you ignore the disaster that sits under the hood - if there was ever an example of a company flinging crap against a wall to see which idea sticks it would be Microsoft. Never have I seen such a poorly laid out operating system; files rammed in random locations, registry clogged to the brim with crap, no consistent naming system (why does 32 still exist in filenames that are 64bit?), half finished frameworks, under utilised frameworks (why aren't common controls etc. being drawn in Direct2D/DirectWrite?) and so on.

Please, I've been following Apple for around 10 years, and around 1/2 dozen bugs in the last 10 years is pretty damn good if you ask me when compared to the walking disaster that I've seen when it comes to the PC world - Dell hiding capacitor issues, HP chocking laptops to the brim with desktop hardware that demands you sit in on a perfectly flat surface, Toshiba and the 3 motherboards I went through in 2 months, the Acer laptops where the first component to die is always the hard disk.

For everyone 'Apple horror story' you have, I can point to a heck of a lot more from the PC world - and that isn't even getting the operating system involved. The operating system in the PC world is but a small component when compared to the larger clusterf-ck that is the PC's race to the bottom and cutting costs when ever and where ever possible.
Not to trivialize this issue, but this post makes a good point.

When a Mac release has problems it's news - sometimes even reaching the NY Times and WSJ, and certainly lights up all the enthusiast sites. Especially since Apple computers are the prestige products in the PC world. And is more easily identifiable since Apple only has a few major SKU's in release at any given time (with fewer custom options for most of them than Dell or HP, etc.).

So what's lacking here is a baseline: I'm guessing that many, many Win 7 computers come out with issues - but that few of these make a public ripple at all (unless a laptop catches on fire on a plane, say), given the relative lack of involved communities, media scrutiny and the sheer number of models and configs from all the companies, nearly all of which sell fewer units/SKU.

My guess is that there are frequent instances of "crashgates" on many WinX86 machines, and a much higher percentage than on Apple's releases, but we simply never hear about them - as most of the discussion and drama takes place with tech service reps in cubicles on another continent.

If there's any way to access this info in any systematic way - which I doubt - it would be interesting to compare it to Apple's overall record. It would likely only make Apple look better in context and provide a dossier to throw in troll faces when they take glee with a Mac glitch.

Still, I recall enough Mac roll out problems, from niggling and infrequent to fairly significant (like this one) and quite wide-spread (and this seems more wide-spread than most by an order of magnitude) to never buy a new Mac model until at least two-three months after release - especially when it's a whole new processor family and first use of new graphics hardware.

My sense is further that Apple reacts with limited comment and is somewhat slow to acknowledge problems until they've really digested the problems and are ready - or nearly ready - with a fix.

And unless someone can correct me, I don't recall any instances where there were any significant remaining problems with any model more than 3-4 months into its release cycle. Cracking in Cube cases might the one exception that comes to mind.

So I imagine there's a team pounding hard away on this and that a software, firmware or (worst case) hardware/recall fix will be forthcoming in fairly short order.
 
This issue affects the entire 6750M equipped lineup. The people reporting no problems are reporting falsely (think having multiple apps open means it is fine), are doing the tests wrong or are in denial.

I have tested 30 machines spanning different build dates, all of them have the issue.

I'm not in denial and I followed the crash test to the tee. I haven't had any problems. Not a single one. I push this thing hard. Maybe those of us who aren't having problems are the lucky ones then.

I certainly don't mean to understate the issue for those of you who are having problems, but I can tell you I am not a liar. I think its a little immature for you to insinuate that those of us not reporting problems are.

Seriously, 30 machines? Really? C'mon.
 
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