Do I have a Lemon?

[stuartbritton]

I bought a MacBook last fall, and have had nothing but grief with it. I guess it is isn't bad when it is working, but I have had 3 catastrophic failure in under a year. The hard drive crashed (thank goodness for time machine), some chip crashed (i think it was RAM, it wouldn't boot up, it beeped loudly instead) and had to reinstall the OS b/c it was running super slow (i mean slow, maybe 2 minutes to open any file). Each time my computer was out of service for quite some time as I would have to book an appointment, go to the apple store, and leave it while they repaired it.

I am not bitter, I am not anti-mac, I am not trying to ignite any debates, and I can accept SOME issues (although my Dell doesn't do this to me).

What I am wondering is:

Is this is what i should be expecting? Or was my particular computer started on a friday afternoon and finished on monday morning?

 

[iLog.Genius]

You might have a lemon. At your rate, you should experience another problem and at that time I would kindly bring that up to the Apple Store or CSR.

 

[leekohler]

This is not normal at all. You should expect much better.

 

[PhixionFilms]

actually to tell you the truth, your very lucky. You are one of the few people i know who had lemons, with nothing but problems. just wait it out, let more problems appear, until apple by them selves notice what your going through. Every body ive known with this problem, usually gets a brand new 17" or high spec 15" macbook.

 

[stuartbritton]

thanks all. I was kind of hoping to hear that. although, Phixionfilms, it is going to take a great new product to make me feel "lucky"! 🙂

 

[l.a.rossmann]

Hard drives utilizing current technology are junk. Someday we will look back and laugh at data storage devices with such a high failure rate.

Bad RAM can happen as well, but not as often.

A "slow" running OS can be caused by many things. I have used some pretty slow macbooks. OSX can get bogged down in a similar manner that windows can, given the right user. It takes more effort to do it to the mac though.

I do not believe you have a lemon.

 

[r34p3rex]

I've worked at my on campus apple authorized service center before, and we've definitely seen worse 😉 We've had people go through multiple logic boards and hard drives all to no avail. Earlier last school year, we sold a batch of Macbooks with premature dying harddrives.. just about 80% of that batch came back for harddrive replacements within 6 months.

As for the OS running slow, that can't really be blamed on the hardware - it might have been something you installed or possibly some file corruption on your harddrive.

Hope you dont' get any more problems! 🙂

 

[conch575]

Lick it, if it's tangy, it's a lemon 😉
I think you did get a lemon, because my MacBook has never acted like that. Can you try and get it replaced by Apple? Or it's out of warranty now?

 

[stuartbritton]

I have it back, it is running nicely. Apple guys sure understood my frustrations with this.

Hopefully I'll have better luck, if not I don't see a choice but to stick with the Dell. Not what I want to do, but I haven't had all these issues with it.

Fingers Crossed......