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Robustness of Macbook Pro

M

macman4789

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jul 12, 2007
369
33
Hi guys,

I've recently bought a macbook pro, (2.4Ghz santa rosa, 15" display). Just a quick question, how durable are these? Not that I'm careless or anythin but I accidentally banged it as I was walking through to another room while it was sleep mode and was wondering how delicate the moving parts i.e. hard drive are inside the computer?

It seems to be workin fine, should there be anythin to worry about?

Thanks for your time
 
Their pretty robust units,

My MBP has taken a good couple of knocks, some of them pretty intense, and still work perfectly fine, i'm a Mac repairer by trade so I usually open her up after any knocks and there's never any internal damage and very rarely any external damage either, Think the only damage I've done to it is when i tried to shut the lid with a pen still at the back

and in relation to the hard drives, when dropped or moved quickly, the hard drive is docked into a lock so it doesn't get damaged
 
If it's working ok, you should be fine. They're portable systems and they're carried in bags, backpacks, etc, so they should certainly be ok for a few bumps. To me, that's expected with a portable.

I am pretty careful with mine, but it's already been through a few small knocks.
 
Mbp

It is durable but the casing is not as robust as the Macbook, the aluminium can be easily bent. I use a speck hard shell to protect it.
 
It's not likely that you'll destroy your computer from a few bumps, even some more intense ones. Even if you drop it the right way, I'm sure it will be ok.

The worst thing that can happen from everyday bumps and the sort is you will get a scratch or dent. My PowerBook (made of the same stuff your MBP is) has a few light scratches on the back of the screen that I'd really prefer weren't there, but I'm the only one who can see them :) Maybe they're not even there at all.
 
macman4789 said:
Just a quick question, how durable are these? Not that I'm careless or anythin but I accidentally banged it as I was walking through to another room while it was sleep mode and was wondering how delicate the moving parts i.e. hard drive are inside the computer?
Click to expand...

if it was in sleep mode the only thing running was your RAM so no need to worry about moving parts. I've seen a few dented powerbooks/MBPs that keep on ticking even though they have dented shells. My friend dropped his from his backpack and he disconnected the airport card. once he reconnected it you would never know it was dropped save a few scratches and dent-in corner.
 
My 2 year old knocked my running MBP off the desk. It feel about 3 feet and suffered no ill effects. Not promoting this sort of treatment, mind you....
 
Thanks for your replies guys.

and in relation to the hard drives, when dropped or moved quickly, the hard drive is docked into a lock so it doesn't get damaged
Click to expand...

How does that work exactly?

Thanks
 
Sbrocket said:
The MacBook Pro has a sudden motion sensor that locks the hard drive head when it detects movement indicative of dropping your computer or some other movement that could cause a drive crash so that damage won't occur.

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=300781
Click to expand...

Its probably just an accelerometer that upon detecting large G forces (or smaller ones in the downard direction), takes the head that reads the hard drive off the disk, so it can't scratch and damage the disk. Its good stuff. I've noticed just throwing my computer lightly about a foot onto the bed that it sort stops, beeps quietly and then the hard drive spins up again. Good feature.
 
I baby my MBP, but I have noticed that people with 12" PowerBooks trash theirs like they are worthless piles of crap. I know I can't say this is true for everyone but of the three people I've known with 12"ers, the computers looked like they had been put in the dryer for a few days then dropped onto tile a few times. But, through all that, latches hardly latching, enormous dents, plastic coming off, disk drives barely reachable, the computer still worked completely fine. Basically, you can do some pretty mean crap to it and it will still work.
 
The MacBook Pro has a sudden motion sensor that locks the hard drive head when it detects movement indicative of dropping your computer or some other movement that could cause a drive crash so that damage won't occur.
Click to expand...

Does that apply for any sort of bangs and bumps? Or just drops? That's really cool I didn't know about that, thanks for the info guys.
 
macman4789 said:
Does that apply for any sort of bangs and bumps? Or just drops? That's really cool I didn't know about that, thanks for the info guys.
Click to expand...

I don't know if there's any specific info as to what amount of movement you need for the sensor to park the drive head, but I'm sure the if its designed to park it if it detects anything that could cause real damage to your drive.
 
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