HORSES FOR COURSES:

MBP's follow in the line of the PowerBooks and these are nortoriously fragile enclosures. I'm on my third PB - what a journey! Poor Ti Book was a disaster, then I got a PB. You have no idea: over 2 years it was almost entirely replaced: three motherboards, two screens, two upper shells a new set of hinges, etc, etc. My backpack fell from car floor height with PB in protective inner shell and I lost the bottom case, an airport card and a few other bits and pieces. I forget all of the other stuff. Finally replaced it a year ago with the last of the PB's.

In its first 4-5 months this one had a new motherboard, two new hard drives, two new bottom cases due to glue failure. The second replacement bottom shell I reinforced with carefully sliced paddle pop sticks and silicon at the resellers before it was re-assembled and that fixed the problem. After 9-12 complete backup and reinstalls (can't remember exactly, brain blocks out painfulr memories) in its first 4-5 months I was really over it.

Then it needed one of those new fireproof batteries.

Oh yes and don't rub the angled bezels that frame the keypad top and bottom because they're not anodized aluminium - I did unintentionally while trying to remove a spot from edge of the command key with a damp cloth. The silver paint flaked off my near new machine that I was taking such pains to keep pristine.

Is there touch-up paint?

Be really vigilant on how you protect the laptop in transit. Don't allow ANY uneven pressure. I made a fibreboard partition for my backpack to distribute the pressure from the front compartment. Uneven pressure causes some sort of misalignment in the hinge mechanisms and this makes the lid more resistant to opening and closing. In time this will cause the screen bezel to loosen on the hinges and eventually detach.

If you have ended up with hard heavy hinges, there is a workaround - I use a very small brush and carefully apply good quality penetrating oil sprayed into some small container from an aerosol can, and gently work the lid dabbing away any excess. I then leave the PB to sit horizontally overnight with the lid closed so that the oil doesn't go where it shouldn't until it becomes more viscous.

ALWAYS open and close the screen from the centre. NEVER put pressure on the corners! Apple will use that against you as it warps the screen and that is a user-induced problem and wont be covered by warranty.

Tis a finicky fragile beast much like a racehorse, in constant need of care and grooming. An iBook it ain't - but if you are aware of the problems, the features and performance outstrip an iBook by far.

It's taken me years of pains and problems to learn how to keep a PB/MBP in good condition, and if you don't know what they're like it can be a rude - and expensive - shock.

No one tells you.

In my last comment I wrote that my second PB had three motherboards - this was including the original and on reflection I realise that this wasn't clear and made it seem worse than it was.

Regards,

Peter C

Steve - Sell the MBP on eBay. Get what you can for it, and get her a Macbook. She'll be happier with the weight and size, since it is more comparable to the iBook. Now that it is on the 2nd generation, most of the issues from gen 1 should be resolved.

LEMONADE: Sell MBP on eBay; purchase new MacBook, take your wife out for a nice dinner with the change.

I was recently forced to "downgrade" from a G4 PowerBook to a new MacBook because I needed Intel/Windows support for work. Long story short, I couldn't be happier. I enjoy using this (black) MacBook more than any other computer I've owned.

Man, sorry to hear about this. I purchased the MBP 17 (core duo) a few months ago and I've not had one single problem (other than the ones I create with all the stupid hacks I do to the system). I do hope you can get lemonade from this somehow.. :-)

I gave my 1ghz 17 PB to my wife and she loves it. Both machines are doing great other than a dead HD in the older 17 which we replaced with a bigger faster one and now that machine feels a lot peppier.

To be honest, the Intel version of Tiger (IMHO) does not feel as fluid and the G4 version. I use the Menumeters app to keep an eye on CPU and sometimes the MBP feels like it has frozen up but the CPU's are not pegged which leads me to believe that the Intel version of Tiger is NOT that stable compared to the PPC version. What's your thoughts on that?

If I'm not that far off base then I hope that when Leopard rolls out it has better support for the Intel platform!! One that that I have been RIPPED about is Parallels. Unbelievable! I used to hate firing up VPC to test my web sites in Widnows. Now, I fire it up and with the Coherence feature of Parallels, I can even make it feel like it's part of OSX.

Regards,
Eric

some people suggested that you could sell such an abused, broken machine for enough money to get a brand-new macbook and still have money left for a nice dinner ... either they're nuts, or i'm underestimating the stupidity of ebay buyers.

macally makes a decent power supply for ibooks for pretty cheap. $40 or so if I remember right. I had to replace my original one about a year ago due to a rabbit chewing through the cord. the macally unit has been just fine.

I have hear similar issues with MBP's but I recommend getting a Core2Duo. Mine is a rock and cool as a cucumber.

That sucks, man. I've had good luck with my MBP--I think you just got a lemon.

For the fan heat problem, there's a great little tool I use that lets me tweak the fans' heat response curve so it's always cool, no matter what I'm doing. You can get it (for free) at:

http://www.lobotomo.com/products/FanControl/index.html

And I thought I was the only one... Everyone always looked at me like I was crazy when I said the I had my 1st Gen MBP replaced 5 times because of all the weird little stuff (keys popping off, random shutdowns, fried speakers, bad ethernet port, etc.) Fortunately, I have an Apple retail store nearby, and I could just walk in. Typically, they would just swap the machine, but I could tell I was starting to get a bit of a reputation... I finally just asked for my money back and decided to wait for the next gen.

Flash forward 6 months... When the Core 2s came out, I ante'd up again. Couldn't be happier... The build quality has really improved, and while it still runs hot, it's not like it was.

I do like the MBs, too. I'm just a sucker for the bigger screen.

I'm having similar issues with random crashes on my Mac Mini Intel. In the error report it generates to Apple, it says that the problem is in the "WindowServer," with an error code of between 56 and 60. It usually happens when I'm using Safari or another application (like TextMate's web preview feature) that relies on the WebKit engine or when I'm using an app with drawers.

Several calls to Apple haven't diagnosed the problem, and I can't be without my computer because I use it daily for work.

Also, the last time I let a two year old touch my Powerbook, the hard drive crashed. Little kids + computers = Dead computers.

I have a new MacBook and my wife has a new MacBook Pro. We too have been plagued with issues. As others mention, I believe something is up with the Intel machines and OS 10.4. We moved from an iBook G3 and a Powerbook G4, and the instability on our new machines is noticable coming from the PPC models. (Primarily with random crashes and file system issues). I did just spot an article online somewhere saying 10.4.9 has been released for testing so maybe soon we'll get fixes to this craziness. And as far as hardware goes: most recently my wife's hard drive got corrupted, and with the latest version of DiskWarrior I get drive errors (which Disk Utility does not find), leading me to suspect the drive format has been corrupted. This happened right after a force-reboot I had to do because the system locked up so bad I couldn't do anything (not even force quit). Still, I think it might be related to the fact that we've been migrating files and apps to our new machines since OS 6 fifteen years ago, and the Migration Assistant crapped out so I had to manually copy things to the MBP. I think I probably (inadvertently) copied some G4 system/library/app support files to the Intel machines that have set us off on the wrong foot. I'm in the process of rebuilding the MBP "properly" (reinstalling the system and all applications and copying doc files only) as per a Genius Bar recommendation, so hopefully that cures things.

I sympathize with your keyboard issue but I must point out it's not a MBP issue. Our 2 year old also pulled all the keys off the keyboard, but off the Powerbook G4 (which has roughly the same keyboard as the MBP) and I also had to snap them back on. If you hunt around online and on eBay, you can find replacement keys for sometimes $6 per key (keep in mind that the keys are cross-compatible sometimes, I ordered keys for the Powerbook 12" and they all worked except one). Depends on how many you have: an entirely new keyboard is about $130 if I remember correctly. I'm more worried about it with my MB because the keys have more space in between for little fingers to get to. Though on the other hand it doesn't have a latch to worry about (it's a magnet close mechanism), which my wife likes much better and wishes her MBP also magnetically closed.

The joys of life, eh? I'm going to chalk it up to growing pains. The move to Intel was rather sudden so no wonder it seems to ache a bit.

MacBook > MBP

Maybe Apple had a little bit more experience with the new Intel chips and all the associated hardware, but my MacBook seems better than my friends' MacBook Pros. I haven't had a single hardware or software issue, and I've been running it constantly for the last four months or so. It's definitely a solid machine.

Also, kids and computers don't mix. That's why there are special toy computers for kids. Apple's hardware is too delicate for child's play not out of poor design, but because that's not who they're designing their hardware to be used by.

My god you sure do whine alot. Half of your problems are because you let a 2 year old play with a $2500 piece of hardware. You get what you deserve there. Based on that, I say its pretty likely the the other stuff is user error too.

I use a mac book pro every day with heavy processor usage and its never been too hot for me. You may have some legit hardware problems, but perhaps you just wern't adamant enough with apple. With that many problems you should have been asking for a replacement, not a repair.

I don't think apple is ready for the "big time" yet. I lost a ton of data on my old MacBook also

if ichat giving problems, try adium.

I bought my MBP in May and have loved it ever since. Sure, one of the fans has gone out, multiple times. But I keep an eye on that. It wines. But nothing has ever broken or failed in the ways you guys have described. Maybe I just have good luck.

@To the two people saying 'Sell it on eBay!'

Selling the MacBook Pro on eBay, knowing it's a lemon, without disclosing the problems you've had with it would be pretty immoral.

Search Google for 'smcFanControl'. It will let you set the minimum rpm of the MBP fans higher than Apple's defaults, this brings my MBP temp down considerably.

If you want your kid to disassemble your laptop get a dell..sound like a neewbie to me

Sounds like Kai needs a whuppin'.....