Oz ,'Chosen'
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My 2008 MacBook pro had the motherboard go out last year.
Did you have it fixed? If so, how much did it cost?
Darn. I was thinking of replacing my MacBook Pro with one of the new 13" MacBook Pros with retina display and SSD (that comes out later this year, right?) So I don't wanna stick a lot of money into it, as it's 3 years old.
Sorry things have taken a long time at Apple stores for you. They have turned repairs around for me in 24 hours many times. Rarely more than 48. The last time I walked in with a bad computer I walked out with a brand new one 60 minutes later.
Do you think the Apple store would be a better option than a reputable independent repair place?
Do you think the Apple store would be a better option than a reputable independent repair place?
Well, you could take it to the Geniuses and try to figure out what's wrong, and then see if it's cheaper at an independent place...
I felt better treated by the Genius encounter I had. Not least of all because they replaced my water damaged thingummy for free even after my warranty expired. But they were nice and focussed and businesslike. There's no use extrapolating from my independent repair experience to what's available to you, but I felt there was a degree of sketch there--possibly because I used to run a tech support department, except it was Compaq and IBM instead of Apple.
tommy,
my computer was under warranty, so they took it from me and repaired it. ND is right though, they told me it would take a week, but I think it took 2 days max.
are you sure your computer is not under warranty (applecare)?
Some geniuses will cut you a break, so hopefully you'll get a good genius who will try to minimize the expense for you.
tommy, try resetting the SMC if you haven't already:
Hmmm. The list of things that a screwed-up SMC causes doesn't sound like my problem.
In any event, I have a 6 PM appointment at the Genius Bar at the Michigan Ave. store in downtown Chicago.
So I'm posting this from my MacBook Pro....
Friday I went to the Genius Bar at the Apple store. I told the guy what had happened and everything I'd tried. He was also unable to boot the MBP from an external drive. So he pulled the drive and discovered he couldn't mount it on a different computer. So it was just a dead HD after all. (Which is weird, as usually when a HD fails you can at least still mount it, right? Anyway, it seems the dead HD was preventing the MBP from booting from the optical drive and USB ports as well.)
So the guy told me, "SInce it sounds like you know what you're doing, I'd recommend you install a new drive yourself." I have to admit it was nice to have my geek ego flattered by a Genius Dude.
Yesterday I bought a new 750 GB drive and installed it. It took about 16 hours to restore data from my Time Machine backup.
The only problem is the last backup was three days before it died. So I lost some mp3s I bought from eMusic, which gives me the option to "repurchase" them. I think I'll call eMusic tomorrow and see if they'll let me download the mp3s I purchased last week for free.
Stuff I bought from the iTunes store will just copy from my iOS devices back into iTunes, right?
glad you got the new drive, tommy!