Well here is the full scoop about this MBP. My brother-in-law bought his wife, my sister a second hand MBP for Xmas of 2008. The unit came with Leopard OSX 10.5.5 already installed and a bootcamp partition with Vista. She used it for a couple of months, but didn’t like Vista and would prefer it had XP. I’m pretty knowledgeable with Windows, but not the Mac. I decided to see what I could do for her. A little while later I had XP Pro installed in the bootcamp partition which was originally only 20GB. But seeing as how she is more of a Windows user than a Mac user, I decided at the time to increase this partition and split the 80GB drive that came with the unit almost in half and I backed up the XP partition (2GB Backup). I finished this in early July 2009 and gave it back to her.
She used the unit for approx. 5-6 months before it dropped dead. She says she has and could still use the MBP for approx. 2.5-3hrs. without a problem by battery power alone until it dropped dead. I took it to a friend. He tried another good battery in the unit with no success. This unit was dead (no start booting up etc...dead). She took the unit to a place where my friend usually goes for parts, computers, etc. They had the unit for quite a while (over a month) before finally getting back to her and then finally telling her that the video card was no good. How much to repair it? A whole week goes by… Finally the guy tells her $450. For another $150-$200 she could buy a brand new Windows type laptop/notebook computer with a full 1 year warranty that would do just fine for her needs.
She at first thought the price was pretty steep and told the shop man not to repair it as yet until she gets back to him.
About another week goes by. She phones the shop man to find out when she can come and pick it up because she doesn’t want to repair it. The shop man “it is being repaired”. Why are you repairing it when I told you to hold on until I got back to you? Don’t know the answer to this one.
When is it going to be finished so I can come and pick it up. Soon. Another week goes by and another; still no computer. Finally it is supposedly finished. She takes me with her to have a look at it and test it to see if it is in fact repaired. I have seldom touched this unit in the year that had passed. It has been out of her hands getting so-called repaired for approx. 5 months. She could not remember her Mac Password. I had set up the system so it would boot directly into XP Pro for her, so she seldom used the Mac side. I even had a hard time trying to remember it. Anyways, we are there to test it out.
I tried many passwords, but needed some time to remember her password that I had made up for her. We could not get into the Mac at that time; so what about the XP side. No trouble logging in. For something to do with the unit, I right-clicked on the desktop to select properties and immediately the MBP suddenly froze. I was forced to turn the MBP off. The MBP would not start up again period. Dead... So we left it for him to fix.
2 week later we return to test it out before taking it home. This shop man knew when she would be coming back in to pick it up. Now if you’re a repair person and someone is going to come and pick-up a “REPAIRED” MBP, wouldn’t you as a shop man leave it plugged in for at least a little while so the battery could get recharged and the customer could fully test the unit before paying the bill for the repairs to the unit?
While all this is going on, I’m looking for a laptop\notebook for myself for a lot of the jobs in my field are now out of town work, not much happening locally.
We get there to once again try to test it out. I’m pretty sure I have the correct password (but my memory isn’t what it use to be) but I’m still unable to log into the Mac. All I get is the spinning wheel of death, forcing me to turn the system off, twice. It’s like I typed in the correct password but for some reason I’m unable to log in. If it was the wrong password, it would immediately notify me of this and revert back to nothing being entered for the password, but this does not happen, just the spinning wheel of death pops up. Now I logged into XP Pro and wasn’t exactly too sure about what video card this unit had had. I right-clicked on the desktop for the properties of this unit’s Video Card, just for something to do on\with this unit. I first thought that this unit had the 9600M video card, but after a couple days I finally realized that due to the date of when I created the backups and by the looks\wears of the unit, it had to have the 8600M video card, for I now remembered that I, at the time I worked on this unit I too had an 8600 video card in my desktop unit running windows and it was at the time still considered a good video card. Anyways, seeing as how this unit had an 8600M instead of 9600M I moved the computer to show and shop man and get his reply. But a soon as I moved the unit towards this shop man, the power adapter pulled out of the socket and all of a sudden the unit dropped dead.
When the power adapter comes unplugged from the unit, the unit didn’t revert to battery power. Why? Your trying to tell me this unit is repaired. If it is repaired, I should be able to walk around with it; It should be able to run on battery power like it use to before it dropped dead.
As soon as the power adapter is removed from the unit the unit drops dead. This should as far as I can see not happen and therefore it is not repaired. My sister has 2 dogs which are constantly beside her and follow her around. Most of the time when I see her using the unit it is connected with the power adapter, but occasionally not. According to my sister, the dogs have pulled the power plug from the unit a couple of times leaving her using battery power until she notices it had been unplugged.
I had taken a half day off work to go with her to check this thing out. I was pretty peed off when first off she had told the guy that she didn’t want the unit to be repaired and yet, it supposedly is\was fixed as they seem to think. If this unit cannot run on battery power and must rely on the power adapter for its power, it must as far as I can see still have a problem. This unit now should not be classified as a laptop but rather a desktop unit. We left the unit with this guy.
Prior to it going in for repairs, my sister says she could use it on straight battery power for 2.5-3Hrs. without a problem. She wants back a working computer without defects for the amount she is about to spend on the repairs. Because of complications arising out of this matter between me and shop man, I can no longer return to the store. My friend is of Indian origin and so is this shop man, they are like friends. Now when I told my friend about what is going on with this unit he’s trying to tell me or say that these things have no bearing on the repair of the unit. It’s as if he is backing this shop man. It seems like we took in a Mac with a perfectly good battery and somewhere along the line they either switched it up for one that is no good or the motherboard they put in the unit has a faulty inverter board. Taking it back from them this way would seem like exchanging one problem for another. My friend as a hobby also fixes computers but most of the time it is software related. He has told me some stories about people bringing him their computer, and because the person that brought him the computer\laptop didn’t know much about them to begin with, he once switched up a 250GB drive for an 80GB drive and the person he fixed the computer for didn’t know the difference. So knowing this, what’s to stop this shop man from doing the same thing with my sister’s battery in this MBP!
The shop man as I found out a little later, doesn’t actually fix the Mac’s he hands them off to someone else to get repaired. So me yelling at this man for this b.s service was unintentionally misdirected.
??? How much should it normally cost, or how much would you pay to replace a MBP motherboard with the 8600M video card?
??? How much is a battery for the MBP with the 8600M video card?
My sister would have taken the unit back and paid for the repairs providing it was operational; this includes being able to turn the unit on and off without the power adapter being required. It should be able to run on battery power which to date after the so-called repairs, it does not.
The above is the reason I’m looking for people’s input about this situation.