Post

MacBook Lemon

23 January 2007 / 3 Comments

My 7 month old base model MacBook now has the mantle of being both the best and the worst computer I’ve ever owned.

The good points are easy – the MacBook is one of the best computers Apple have ever made. The price is incredibly low for the features it has, like the beautiful 13.3 inch display, built in iSight, MagSafe power connector and more. It’s also amazingly fast for such a cheap computer. It truly is a joy to use.

When it works, that is.

Yesterday it completely died – it wouldn’t boot up. It looked like a classic hard disk failure, as the HD was making an ominous clicking sound and booting from a CD worked ok. Fine. Great. I can just about deal with a dead HD; I’m going to loose some data (I have some backups, but not complete ones) but I have a 80gb drive waiting to go in it so I’ll be up and running quite quickly.

Except I can’t get OS X to install on the new HD. Which means the logic board is probably screwed.

Sigh.

This just rounds off nicely the rather long list of problems that this MacBook has had:

  • The battery completely died about 5 months in, which was replaced by Apple under warranty.
  • It seems to suffer from the common discolouring problem on the palm rests, so it’s now slightly orange.
  • The down arrow doesn’t work all the time – you have to press it quite hard.
  • The track pad button sometimes doesn’t notice when you click.
  • Semi-occasional kernal panics, which I guess are related to this latest problem.

I really do like the MacBook range, and don’t think their are huge problems with them (I know plenty of people with them that haven’t had problems) but it sure sucks to get a lemon.

Comments

I’ve given up every buying a first generation product from Apple. Every single one (desktops, ipods, powerbook, macbook pro) has had significant problems. Their bleeding edge is usually pretty raw.

RL
Jan 23, 12:02 PM

Yes, I bought a first generation macbook and since have had it repaired three times. The first was within a month of owning it, it was that random shutdown thing. Next, only a month ago the HD was clicking and then wouldn’t mount. Sent it in for repairs, when it came back the ethernet port was fried. Had the logic board replaced. Now, I have only owned it for 8 months and this is crappy. What are the chances of them replacing the whole thing with a NEW MacBook?

Daniel
Feb 3, 01:26 AM

Yes same deal….. first random shut downs, poor battery life, built-in Isight camera broke & just last week HD crashed totally , all data gone ..didnt back up all that well (my fault) but I’ve been owning Macs for 12 years and never had this many serious problems as I’ve had in the last 9 months with this Macbook…. i think if I waited a few months more (bought mine in May 06) or got a Macbook Pro I’d have less problems..it seems people with problem free macbooks I know bought them later on or have macbook pros.
Apple will give me a new HD & battery & repair camera , etc all under warranty but I dont have alot of faith in the unit itself. They told me in order to get a new computer from them , I would have to have the SAME repair done at least 3 times in a year..so I guess 3 major but unrelated problems doesnt qualify ? I’m hoping when I get it back all my problems will be over..we’ll see

Jim
Feb 20, 05:25 PM

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