How to make shure to get a good-quality-MBP this time?

[iPeg]

Hey everyone,

I've been having a 15" 1,8 Ghz CD MBP, right from the start, bought it somewhere around March 06 – And guess what, everything that could go wrong DID go wrong.
It was my first Mac and I spend (for my financial circumstances at the time) a lot of money on it, so it was VERY frustrating for me to bring it in more than 5 times because of:

- Both fans started making noises (One died really spectacular)
- The screen got filled with funny dots (screen replaced)
- The battery bulged (Must have been one of this explosive ones)
- The next battery just stopped working
- The lid-close-button got stuck
- It made a whining Noise until the Logicboard was replaced
- The pins of the macsafe-powercord got stuck...

...and not to mention the aluminium started to get tiny little dots (not covered by the guarantee) and the service at the local store (not an offical apple store, but the only apple reseller in germany beside the apple online store) was more like getting beaten very hard with your laptop everytime I came in.


But...long story short, I love this computer because even though it broke more often than Steve Jobs said "Boom" during the Intel-Mac-Announcement, it didn't manage to brake my heart, so by now I want a new one and this time I'm planning big:

I want the 17", High-Res-Glossy, Top-of the Line thing with the best configuration I can get. But please tell me, that all these ****ed up quality-issues have been addressed by now.

Otherwise I think I have to invest my 4000 bucks into something more reliable, and I would be happy to hear what that would be.

 

[cmaier]

Hey everyone,

I've been having a 15" 1,8 Ghz CD MBP, right from the start, bought it somewhere around March 06 – And guess what, everything that could brake DID brake.
It was my first Mac and I spend (for my financial circumstances at the time) a lot of money on it, so it was VERY frustrating for me to bring it in more than 5 times because of:

- Both fans started making noises (One died really spectacular)
- The screen got filled with funny dots (screen replaced)
- The battery bulged (Must have been one of this explosive ones)
- The next battery just stopped working
- The lid-close-button got stuck
- It made a whining Noise untill the Logicboard was replaced
- The pins of the macsafe-powercord got stuck...

...and not to mention the aluminium started to get tinny little dots (not covered by the guarantee) and the service at the local store (not an offical apple store, but the only apple reseller in germany beside the apple online store) was more like getting beaten very hard with your laptop everytime I came in.


But...long story short, I love this computer because even though it broke more often than Steve Jobs said "Boom" during the Intel-Mac-Announcement, it didn't manage to brake my heart, so by now I want a new one and this time I'm planing big:

I want the 17", High-Res-Glossy, Top-of the Line thing with the best configuration I can get. But please tell me, that all these ****ed up quality-issues have been adressed by now.

Otherwise I think I have to invest my 4000 bucks into something more reliable, and I would be happy to hear what that would be.

"shure?"
"brake?"
"tinny?"
"planing?"
"adressed?"
"untill?"

really?

Anyway, it does sound like you had a pretty horrendous run of bad luck. I don't get the sense that there is a universal quality problem with the MBPs, but that is a lot of bad things to happen to one person.

Any chance you subjected the notebook to more physical stress than normal? Do you carry it around a lot?

I am not sure there are any other better choices; I've had notebooks from five different manufacturers. The only one that has caused me zero problems is the toshiba, but I think that's just random chance. The compaq has held up comparatively well considering the beating I give it carrying it around, but has not been problem-free. I have lots of friends with Dell's, and they have had uniformly bad experiences.

I sense that it's largely luck of the draw.

 

[synth3tik]

A reseller should have at same if not a better 14 day return, so in the case that you get your MBP and something is wrong you should be able to just return it for a replacement.

 

[iPeg]

"shure?"
"brake?"
"tinny?"
"planing?"
"adressed?"
"untill?"

really?

Me very sorry. Me correct lot of mistakes, but not headline, as was not possible. (Sorry, my german is better, but I hope you understand me. Just let me get this right:

...sure...shure was a earphones-brand, brake means stoping a moving object, tinny would be a better name for a whore, planing is just plain wrong, adressed is missind a "d" and untill has to much "l" instead.

But what about "really"? My dict. says it's right. ;-)

About the physical stress:

I think "using it one year on windows xp with many 3D-Rendering-Tasks" and "carrying it around twice a day in a laptop bag" may be considered as "physical stress", but that's what I expect from a laptop, because that's what it's for. And in fact I do use it almost 10 hours a day, sometimes even more.

@synth3tik: unfortunately that wasn't possible, but most of the problems occured months later anyway. To me it seems that most of the issues came from poor quality parts that perished over time (Like the bearing of the fans, that started to make loud scratching noises and finally got stuck - or the lid-enclosure due to some broken plastic part - or the small springs in the macsafe-connector that hold the pins)

I heard from a few people that Apple outsourced most of it's hardware-manufacturing to China since a few years, and before that they build the hardware in the US. Is that true?

 

[cmaier]

Me very sorry. Me correct lot of mistakes, but not headline, as was not possible. Tut mir Leid, mein Deutsch ist besser.

Let me guess...sure...shure was a earphones-brand, brake means stoping a moving object, tinny would be a better name for a whore, planing is just plain wrong, adressed is missind a "d" and untill has to much "l" instead.

But what about "really"? My dict. says it's right. ;-)

About the physical stress:

I think "using it one year on windows xp with many 3D-Rendering-Tasks" and "carrying it around twice a day in a laptop bag" may be considered as "physical stress", but that's what I expect from a laptop, because that's what it's for.

Es tut mir auch Leid. Mein Deutsch ist schlecht.

At least some of your problems could have resulted from being carried around and getting beat up some.