The Deal

While I prefer the OSX operating system, I don't consider myself a fanboi.

It's a preference and I've no problems with using Win 7 or XP.  I have a boot partition set up for Win 7 on my Mac Pro, in fact.

'Twas the threat of Vista that drove me to Mac.  I was perfectly happy with XP, but if you wanted a new computer at the time with the latest hardware; you got Vista or OSX.  (Or Linux which I am not knowledgeable enough to operate).

I started with a Mid 2007 15" MacBook Pro model A1226.  The video card died.

The warranty coverage warned several times about backing up my data because if the computer was too dead they'd replace the whole thing with a new one and my data would be gone.

So I bought an Early 2008 15" MacBook Pro model 1260 to replace it.

For a while I had two laptops once the 1226 came back from warranty.  I preferred the 1260 because it had a 2.6 GHz Core 2 Duo and 512mb of VRAM compared to the 1226's 2.4GHz and 256.

A while back the video died on the 1260.

No warranty left.  Back to the 1226.

A burr crawled up my ass and I decided I liked the touch-pad of the 1260 better and it had a 200gb 7200 rpm drive instead of a 5400rpm 160gb.  The 1260's screen was in better shape too.

So I did some parts swapping.

Just the other day the 1226 video card died again.

I just found out about the recall that was in effect when the 1260 died, but has expired now.  It pisses me off that Apple didn't send an email to people with affected computers to tell them that they'd recalled them.  The reason for the recall is two-fold.  First the ATI chipset they bought was not well made and sensitive to the heat levels that Steve Jobs seemed to think was acceptable.  Second the Chinese slaves who soldered it to the logic board didn't do a good job.

Right now I am looking at $270 to buy a refurbished logic board for the 1260.  It's 2.5GHz instead of 2.6GHz but it has the 512mb video.  The good news about refurbs is ATI did manage to make a chipset that could take the heat and the refurbishment centers are doing a good job with the solder.

Time to do some saving.  The laptop will have to get in line.  I have $750 to save up and drop on tires for the Vette and $150 for front tires on the Biscayne.