Posted by
Paul Lefebvre in
Macintosh
Jan 26th, 2010 |
10 Comments
I’m always looking for ways to get more speed out of my MacBook Pro.
Last month, Mac OS X Hints published a hint about using an ExpressCard SSD in a MacBook Pro. Then early this month, Rob Griffiths of Macworld (and the Mac OS X Hints guy) posted both an article and video on how he bought and set one up with his MacBook Pro. The speed improvement seemed pretty impressive, so I ordered one myself (from TigerDirect). Specifically, I ordered the FileMate SolidGo 48GB ExpressCard Ultra SSD.
I usually order tech gear like this from NewEgg, but TigerDirect had a better price ($140 vs. $170)...
Posted by
Paul Lefebvre in
Macintosh, Windows
Oct 5th, 2009 |
9 Comments
I have been running Windows 7 RC x86 (the 32-bit version) in Bootcamp for several months now. It’s worked well, but I really didn’t like that it couldn’t see the full 6GB of RAM in my MacBook Pro (Late 2007).
Snow Leopard comes with new Bootcamp drivers that support 64-bit Windows and adds a new file system driver to allow you to read your OS X files while in Windows. So I decided it was time to upgrade.
I quickly learned that I would need to to a complete reinstall. Microsoft doesn’t let you do an in-place install from a 32-bit version of Windows to a 64-bit version. Understandable....
Posted by
Paul Lefebvre in
Macintosh
Sep 24th, 2009 |
1 Comment
I’m back up and running. This post is being written on my repaired MacBook Pro!
Wednesday night (9/23) the status of my laptop changed from “On hold” to “Repaired”. And to my surprise this morning I saw that it was out on a FedEx truck for delivery to my house. Apple had shipped it overnight from their repair facility in Texas!
Upon opening the laptop, it showed two items as being repaired:
605-1791 Logic Board (No Video)
616-0261 Battery (Runtime Too Short)
I had never noticed that my battery runtime was too short, but then I don’t use the MacBook Pro on...
Posted by
Paul Lefebvre in
Macintosh
Sep 22nd, 2009 |
1 Comment
It appears a lot of people have been affected by the NVIDIA chip bug. A poster on the Apple Discussion forums posted that he suspects more people are being affected by this now because of Snow Leopard, which uses the GPU more heavily. This seems plausible to me.
Anyway, still no love for my MacBook Pro. It’s been sitting at the Apple Repair Center since 9/15 with the status “On hold – Part on order”. As of today that means the part has been on order for a week and still hasn’t arrived. So more waiting for me.
Considering that others have said the repair has taken...
Posted by
Paul Lefebvre in
Macintosh
Sep 14th, 2009 |
4 Comments
For those of you in the same boat, here is an update regarding the dead displays on my MacBook Pro.
I arrived at my noontime Genius appointment a few minutes early and they were able to take me right away. The Genius was aware of the NVIDIA issue and after a quick test to confirm the displays were dead, took it out back to do a “specific test for the NVIDIA issue”. He came back a few minutes later and confirmed that this was the NVIDIA chip failure.
Unfortunately for me, they don’t do repairs in the store so my MacBook Pro had to be sent out (with an estimated 5-7 business days...
Posted by
Paul Lefebvre in
Macintosh
Sep 11th, 2009 |
5 Comments
Damn it! My MacBook Pro has succumbed to the dreaded NVIDIA graphics processor defect. The NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT apparently can stop working various MacBook Pros from 2007 and 2008. It’s bad enough that Apple extended the repair period to be up to 3 years from date of purchase, which is fortunate since this laptop is about 18 months old and out-of-warranty.
In retrospect, the video had been acting a little flaky lately. Sometimes the displays would not come back up after waking from sleep, for example.
Everything was fine this morning; the system booted normally. I decided to apply...
Posted by
Paul Lefebvre in
Macintosh
Oct 28th, 2008 |
5 Comments
I don’t remember where I first heard about it, but I think I was reading up on the newly release MacBook Pros when someone commented that the older ones could actually hold up to 6GB of RAM. That was news to me. I knew that Apple specified a maximum of 4GB, so I was intrigued. More RAM is better after all.
A quick Google search turned up a couple interesting forum topics that did indeed indicate that 6GB worked as long as you had a Santa Rosa chipset or newer (June 2007 or newer MacBook Pro).
That was enough for me, so last week I ordered myself a 4GB stick from NewEgg ($160). It arrived...
Posted by
Paul Lefebvre in
Macintosh
Jul 24th, 2008 |
4 Comments
I purchased a MacBook Pro a few months ago. It’s been great, but I found the screen to be a bit small for my liking. So I added an external monitor, an old Formac 17″ LCD (1280×1024) that I’ve been using for years. That worked pretty well, but I just didn’t feel I had enough screen space.
As luck would have it, I found a used 23″ Apple Cinema Display on Craigslist at a bargain price. A MacBook Pro with a Cinema Display is the way to go! I tossed aside the Formac with nary a thought.
But then I thought it would be cool to also make use of the Formac as well,...
