appleschmapple

4-month old MacBook on 2nd battery fails!

2008-01-06T12:12:00.000-08:00

Oh no, what's going on here then?

That's right, I've had to resurrect the old "fixed with a 2 pence coin & clamped to a table" iBook of old. Because my 4 month old black MacBook is buggered! 2 Macs side by side & neither one capable of being portable.

After the nice man at Apple sent me a new battery in October 2007, this seemed to make my laptop well again. My MacBook performed without a hitch...until about a week ago.
The battery power reading started plummeting suddenly again...The Random Shutdowns started rearing their ugly heads...and I got more and more pissed off with the whole enterprise. And now the dreaded black X of doom was back...on battery number 2!! Then the thing wouldn't boot from battery at all, and became - just like my iBook - a stationary object incapable of being portable. Only the AC power lead would make it work

The "Genius" was consulted this time, as my 90 day free phone support had expired. He looked a bit puzzled, changed the battery over to their MacBook - and it worked. Sadly, their battery wouldn't start my MacBook. The "Genius" said he thought that the problem was therefore probably with either the battery connection in the laptop, or the logic board. Oh, and while he was examining my black MacBook the "Genius" managed to scratch the case. Thanks a lot. Love your work sir...

Bloody Nora, can't Apple build a machine that "Just works"?

So, tomorrow the MacBook - 4 months old - goes to the Apple Store for repair.

Oh dear, what's happening to my MacBook?

2008-01-06T11:50:00.000-08:00

After a month or so of faultless use, I was getting on well with my lovely new black MacBook.

It was more expensive than most of the equivalent PCs, but it was nice to look at. And the keys were nice. And the screen had a nice glossy finish to it. And it was black. Lovely.

But then dear reader, something strange happened. And that's when my sorry saga of bad luck with Macs continued...
I didn't know it then, but I had become a victim of Random Shutdown Syndrome. For those new to this phenomenon, see here. As the good people at www.macbookrandomshutdown.com point out, there's at least 1,944 other sufferers out there, and perhaps many more who are suffering in silence.

What happened?
Well, it all started when the battery reading started behaving strangely in early October 2007. This was just about a month after I got my new MacBook. The % battery reading would go from 95% (or whatever it was at) to 0% without warning. Then it would mysteriously return to normal. Odd, I thought. But, the machine kept working & I just plugged it in to see if that would help. Over the next few days, the battery became even more eccentric and started displaying the dreaded black X of doom. "No batteries available" my month-old MacBook said!

"That's odd" I thought again, "because I can see the battery. It's in the space where the battery goes". "And all its little lights are coming on". Curiouser and curiouser...

So I called the nice man at AppleCare. He was very pleasant and got me to perform a few simple manoeuvres to try & fix the problem. They didn't work. The nice man said he thought there was a problem with my battery and that the lovely, friendly people at Apple would sent me a shiny brand new battery by UPS.

They sent me a new battery, and lo and behold! it worked. How helpful of the nice people at Apple. Once again, I was surfing away on my fabulous MacBook...

A New Dawn - my new MacBook arrives...

2008-01-06T11:33:00.000-08:00

So, I soldiered on which my bodged iBook clamped to a solid surface to get it to work...
But then I graduated & started a new job.

And so with my new found wealth I decided that having a portable computer that was, in fact, only as portable as the coffee table that it was attached to was ridiculous! I decided enough was enough.

Reader, I struggled with the decision regarding what laptop to buy for some time. I was pretty disappointed with Apple after my iBook died after just 2 years, so I read around a bit, asked friends and generally mulled over which brand to go for...
Friends with MacBooks were very happy with their machines. They looked nice (especially the black ones) and seemed to work really rather well. OSX was, as I knew from my iBook, a joy to use.

So should I buy a MacBook, even though my last Mac turned out to be rubbish? A Sony Vaio might be nice, and Sonys tend to be reliable I thought...and blimey, Microsoft Vista looks just like OSX, so perhaps I should go for a PC and forget about Macs? My housemates' PCs were both working well too, even though one was an ancient pre-wireless Toshiba laptop.

What did I do? I spent £900 on a black MacBook. After all, if one Mac I'd owned had been crap, surely I couldn't have the same bad luck twice?

The 2 pence iBook fix fails....it was too good to last

2008-01-06T11:17:00.000-08:00

Dear reader, the joy of fixing my iBook using nothing more than a 2 pence coin and some Blu-Tak was short lived.

After a few months of working fairly well, the home-repaired iBook once again began freezing and crashing thanks to the same Logic Board / Video Card problem that had brought it to its knees in the first place.

What to do? Spend some scarce funds on a new laptop, or once again try to bodge the thing? You know the answer! Bodge the bastard!

I read here that by placing c-clamps over the offending Video Card that a stricken iBook could be miraculously revived. That had to be worth a go I thought...

So - here's the result: a fully-functioning (but totally immobile) iBook.

Repair cost: £4.99 (thecost of 2 c-clamps from my local DIY store). That's about $8.

Result!

The 2pence iBook fix!

2008-01-06T10:58:00.000-08:00

Following the instructions found here and here, I managed to take apart my iBook, and install a cunning device to fix my logic board. Basically, I needed to push the bit of the logic board that was making my laptop crash into place so that it connected to the rest of the computer properly.

The materials I used were as follows:
a 2 pence coin, and;
some Blu-Tak.

Total cost: about 2.1 pence. That's a grand total of about 5 cents US$.

I put the case back together with the 2p widget in situ, and Hey Presto!, the bloody thing worked again! No crashes, no nothing...the old girl was back to her self again!

Dear reader, I was most pleased that I'd saved myself the cost of a new laptop (or logic board repair). The key thing was to put pressure over the GPU.

The Story Begins...

2008-01-06T10:08:00.000-08:00

In 2003, when I bought a G3 iBook laptop computer from Apple. It wasn't the fastest or best equipped machine, but it served me well during my time at university. And it looked nice. And even better, there were no problems with viruses and those pesky Trojans. (Aren't they a brand of condom?!).

All was well until around 2 years later, when the machine would suddenly and inexplicably crash - or freeze with funny lines on the screen.

The "Genius" at my local Apple Store looked at the thing for 5 minutes and said "Yeah, that's probably your logic board" and explained that it was not really economical to repair. He also suggested that I might like to invest in a much newer & sexier machine, the Intel-powered MacBook. He said upgrading to one of those was a "no-brainer". These MacBooks had been selling like hot cakes but decided I would hold off for a while, and investigated how to repair my iBook at home. I was still an empoverished student and shelling out for a new MacBook was a bit scary.

Fascinating what people can figure out isn't it? I found a plethora of people in a similar situation on the Interweb, whose iBooks' logic boards had failed. Take a look at this page for more tales of iBook woe. Some of them had come across ways of resurrecting their iBooks using candles, bits of metal and various other household items.

Could this really work???