On February 21st, 2006, I received my MacBook Pro from Apple.
For the first couple of hours, it was slow going.
For many reasons.
But, soon enough, things begin to show the rushed nature of this hardware and software.
First, I did the ‘migrate your data onto your new computer’ via the firewire connection and my old Powerbook G4.
This goes smoothly but takes almost 3 hours to complete. Yah, I had some 70GB of data to move around and I had other work to do, so it did not impact me.
I finally get a chance to log into the system the first time…
The Spotlight indexer was running constantly and the system got pretty hot. Up by the escape key, you could not hold your fingers against the aluminum for very long.
The system was quite fast, though, once the indexing was complete.
I decided to see what highdef would look like, but…Quicktime crashes repeatedly – this isn’t much fun. I report the crash to Apple a couple of times, but work started to encroach on my ability to play, so I went through System Preferences to set up the system so I can lock the screen.
Oh no, this does not work. I set it to require a password upon Screensaver activation, but it does not engage.
I decide to put the new laptop to sleep, that should work to allow me to lock the system.
It did not.
That work thing was still happening, so I powered down the system, correctly, and walked away for a while.
That night, I played with everything I could play with to see if I could figure out the issue with the locking of the screen and could not find anything that was causing the problem.
Talked to my bud Jeremy, he had the bright idea to create a new user to test out the issue.
Of course this works fine, the new monkeyboy login I created works like a champ. I can have the screensaver engage the lock, putting the system to sleep while this user is logged in works as well to require a password upon waking up. WTF?
I compare the different .plist files that were created and even resort to copying some of them over, but alas, my normal login does not work to engage the password prompt.
I decide that the following day I would reinstall the system.
Got to work the next morning all excited to show off my new toylaptop. Pulled it out of my bag, and it was again super hot. Hotter than it had been prior while indexing! OUCH!
No biggy, open the top and … nothing happens.
Hmm…what is going on? Perhaps it didn’t like being put to sleep, I mean, hell, it is already borked with my login. So, I do the bad thing, I power cycle the laptop….and, again, nothing happens. I hear the DVD drive make that godawful grinding sound, but the display does not come up. System sits there…taunting me, quietly.
In the end, it looks like one of the SO-DIMMs had gotten loose and after reseating (and calling Apple – they were nice on the phone, though of no help at all unfortunately – I should have just gone with my gut and reseated the RAM right away instead of calling) the system is back online and going strong.
So, I reinstall the beast later on (takes a little while) and skip the migration application.
later, I have a working laptop and most of my data I wanted to save anyway copied over.
Since then, it has been great, except for the constant application crashing issues. But that is for another entry.
Is this laptop worth it?
I think so, once the operating system and application issues are resolved. The system is very quiet, and while the top runs quite warm, the bottom isn’t nearly as hot as I expected. The system is quite fast.
I’ll keep it.
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