It all started Sunday night. I was relaxing trying my hand at some pixel art while watching Iron Man 2 when suddenly my screen flickered. I thought I had perhaps moved the laptop and it shook the screen - I kept clicking. Less than a minute later it started again but this time it was constant flickering. The trackpad was working as I saw the pointer move with me but then it quickly turned into the dreaded spinning color wheel (AKA The Spinning Beach Ball of Death). I tried several times to reboot but they all resulted in the same flickering a few minutes after rebooting. Being around computers almost my entire life and having plenty of hands-on experience with them I concluded it must be a video card/GPU/motherboard issue.
I thought for a while and decided to just order a new MacBook Pro on Amazon thinking this may be the end of my 3 year-old trusty laptop. After all, 95% of my work revolves around my laptop and fixing a motherboard issue on an out of warranty MacBook Pro would probably run about $800. The next morning my trusty consultant, Sebastian, suggested there might be a recall. After some time looking I found a blog post by Mr. Jim Mitchell detailing a very similar experience to mine and indeed there was a recall out for my MacBook Pro! Unfortunately he didn’t have an official Apple reference to verify this so after some more research I finally found the Apple Support Article.
Apparently the NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT GPU’s which are included in some 2008 MacBook Pro’s have a packaging defect causing them to fail prematurely. The recall is good up to 4 years from purchase date. I have a date with the Genius store tonight and hopefully I can get my faithful laptop back to working condition.
The question now is: Should I keep the new MacBook Pro which should be arriving any moment now?
UPDATE 1 - 4/5/2011 @ 6:38PM
At the Apple store yesterday I was told that while my MacBook Pro is the same model as the ones affected, the recall does not apply to it since it is not generating an error code. What? That’s like saying the Toyota brake recall won’t be honored until brake fails and you crash.
They offered to keep the laptop overnight to do some more hardware testing on the logic board (remember when it was called a motherboard?) and see if they could generate the error and/or code.
Hopefully this can be resolved via the recall which should apply. Worse case scenario the flat rate cost to fix whatever may be wrong is $310 - apparently that is a good deal since my laptop is in good condition. I’d like to avoid paying that and get the recall which is what I should get. Let’s see what I hear today…
UPDATE 2 - 4/6/2011 @ 3:30PM
I received a call from an Apple customer support rep from the store. Very friendly guy. He said the techs had done more extensive testing on the logic board and all the tests passed and no problems could be found. Luckily I had recorded video on my iPhone of the incident which I will email to them as a report note. I also restated my concern that this should be covered under the recall. He said he will tell the techs again to make sure. Hopefully they identify the problem this time!
UPDATE 3 - 4/7/2011 @ 2:40PM
Received a call from the Apple store that the laptop was ready to pick up. Phone rep confirmed they replaced the logic board (not due to recall though) and the repair was free of charge. Woo!
UPDATE 4 [RESOLVED] - 4/7/2011 @ 5:10PM
Arrived at Apple store and told the designated Genius bar “host” that I was there to pick up my laptop. He asked for ID and sent one of his minions to get my precious. Now comes the interesting part. The minion comes out with my laptop and then another laptop ON TOP OF MINE. I take very good care of my stuff so seeing this was the equivalent of seeing someone sitting on your car or a stranger pushing your child on a park swing. I tell the guy “Whoa! Careful with my laptop!” the guy looks at me scared and quickly separate the two. Grr.
When it’s my turn he comes over with a release form and the amount of $526.50 on it and asked me to sign. I ask if the $526.50 is something that I’m supposed to owe and he says that I need to sign for him to check. Weird but okay (not like me since I never sign unless I’m sure)…
He goes off to his computer for a minute or two and comes back confirming that I do owe this amount. I tell the minion in a nice but firm matter that I had received a call earlier and that this repair was free of charge. He then asks if I would like for him to go speak to the person that called me earlier today. Uh… YES! So off he goes with my laptop in his hand. Grr.
Twenty to thirty minutes later with a few back-and-forth conversations and I see three employees huddled around my precious. I’m getting antsy but I just relax and soon the minion comes back with a receipt. The receipt was a mess (they charged for parts and labor, credited back most of it and the rest paid in cash) but it showed I owed nothing. Apparently since the laptop wasn’t generating the necessary error code to warrant the recall they had to replace the logic board and do some “magic” in order for me to not be charged.
Overall the experience was good though flaky. What bothers me is had I not insisted that this was a problem related to the recall and emailed them proof, I would have had to pay the $310 (or even worse $526.50) to have my laptop fixed. I’m sure tons of people fall victims to this kind of situation on a daily basis. I’m not saying the employees were at fault here - I actually think they did a great job and they were all very helpful in getting this resolved. In the end it took a bit of work but I got my laptop back and seems to be working fine.
Now… do I keep the new MacBook Pro or return it? *sigh*
