About 2 weeks ago my 2007 MacBook Pro froze on me with a corrupted screen. It was obvious that it wasn’t your normal software freeze, it looked like how a brain aneurysm might feel like. The only choice was to cut all power and reboot. This kept happening over the following week, becoming more frequent, until the day where it had just had enough of the resusitation and just refused to boot.
Assuming it was a motherboard/graphics issue I needed to get something done rather quick as I was at the tail end of a big job and needed to finish what I was doing. I wasn’t panicing to much, and decided to take my hardrvie out and put it in my girlfriends macbook pro (I thought this would get me out of jail). I then added a new blank hardrive to my effected laptop and took it up to the local MacCentric shop to get a quote on a fix.
Inititally I thought I would just go in there and speak to a technicial who would say within 3 seconds of showing him
“Yeah mate its your core board, that’ll cost roughly $500 to fix”
But to my annoyance I was greeted by an ill informed secratary who made me fill out forms rather than ask a technican 2 meters away behind closed doors, if he could have a look at it. Late the next day I recieved a voice mail with half the news I’de expect.
“Your motherboard/graphics card are stuffed!” (yep I wish you told me that on the spot).
The other half of the news was, due to the fact the client has opened the computer, they have caused the hardware failure and instead of a wopping $1000 fee to fix it would be doubled to $2000!!!! What the F$%K! Is this some Apple policy? It was out of warrenty, I’m happy to pay for it to be fixed, but trying to blame me for breaking it when I opened it and doubling the charge… No way man!
Peeved off I went online (using my girlfriends laptop) and had a look at ebay for a similar replacement. Low and behold the same spec machine was selling for around $1200. Cheaper to buy a second hand one hey! However whislt looking I found a little chinese guy offering services to fix MacBook Pro motherboards for $250… BONUS, that’s what I wanted to see. I’m in the process of shipping it off stayed tuned!
Meanwhile back at the homestead, my girlfriends 13″ MacBook had to be hooked up to my BenQ 241W, I have had troubles with this monitor, shortly after I bought it in 2006. Initiall problems were the DVI connection spact out and it wouldn’t ‘detect’ any signal. This initially started from my MacBook Pro, but also was happening on my PC, so it wasn’t related to computer or cable. After spending a lot of time in forums ect, I came to the conclusion that the ‘firmware’ for that monitor needed to by updated, DOH.. What a hassle. I forgot about that and used the DSUB/VGA connection which continued to work. All up until now!
I plugged the 13″ MacBook Pro in, and for some reason I am now getting the same “issue” as the DSUB … “no signal detected”… urghhh! I wrote an email to BenQ, and 2 weeks later I am still to get a repsonse! In the meantime I went to the local Office Works and picked up a HP 23″LED for $226, BARGIN MAN!
I bought it home, unpacked it, realising the price reflected the build, eg no USB or HDMI connection and a crappy static plastic stand, but hey it’s so thin and light who cares!
So I was set up again able to work, with a borrowed laptop and a cheap LCD monitor which rocked! Little after half an hour of getting back into getting some real work done… PURPLE SCREEN OF DEATH, both screens went purple and nothing happend. Time to cut all power again and reboot! This time I kind of pretended nothing happened, and the problem seemed to stop, until my girlfriend came home from work and was doing some web browsing when the same thing happened. I immediately got blamed for stuffing up her perfectly working laptop, and it was now all my fault.
First things first I just went and did a system software update, and low and behold one of the fixes was for a purple screen of death on 13″ MacBook Pros hooked upto external displays. Cool, it seemed like I was clearing up all issues. I installed the updates and restarted. I just wanted to say that these upadates seemed to have done nothing except alternate between a purple and black screen! LUSH, maybe I need to buy a new MacBook Pro and Cinema Display, is that what they are trying to say?