My MacBook Pro Return From Death

Shortly after Steve Jobs died, my beloved Macbook Pro kicked the bucket too!

It happened when I was getting rid of OS-X Lion and just reinstalled Snow Leopard.

The MBP booted up with its startup chime, but there was nothing on the screen!

Like a good Apple user I reset the PRAM and the NVRAM, no go; I then connect the MBP to another screen, still nothing!

A search in Google confirmed the fault most likely was caused by the Nvidia fiasco!

According to Apple:

"In July 2008, NVIDIA publicly acknowledged a higher than normal failure rate for some of their graphics processors due to a packaging defect.

At that same time, NVIDIA assured Apple that Mac computers with these graphics processors were not affected.

However, after an Apple-led investigation, Apple has determined that some MacBook Pro computers with the NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT graphics processor may be affected.

If the NVIDIA graphics processor in your MacBook Pro has failed, or fails within four years of the original date of purchase, a repair will be done free of charge, even if your MacBook Pro is out of warranty."

Happier time... my MBP driving the Viewsonic VP2250wb 21"

New Fix for Hybrid HDD!

On February 17 I wrote about "A Hybrid HDD for my MacBook Pro", I was happy because now I have a 500 GB drive instead of only 160 GB of the OEM!

Now I am able to dedicate a 30 GB Scratch Partition just for Photoshop!

It was not all wine & roses though, after using my trusted MBP with the new innards for two days, I notice something "strange"; during a task, say; when I am running a Photoshop "action", without warning or reason, the action will just freeze for a second or so and then continue!

I also notice it is impossible to put the MBP to sleep when I wanted to!

It can't be my imagination, especially when a friend from Singapore post this link in Face Book!

It was a story from Engadget titled:

Momentus XT hybrid drive causing headaches, Seagate working to fix

Hybrid HDD hiccup in MacBook Pro!

On February 17 I wrote about "A Hybrid HDD for my MacBook Pro", I was happy because now I have a 500 GB drive instead of only 160 GB of the OEM!

Now I am able to dedicate a 30 GB Scratch Partition just for Photoshop!

The main reason I pick this Seagate drive was the incredible review done by benchmarkreviews.com !

According to their review and I quote...

Key Features and Benefits

• Boots 40 percent faster than traditional 7200-RPM drives (for overall system performance, that's within 1% of an SSD*)
• Cuts costs by 75 percent compared to SSDs by combining solid state and hard drive technologies
• Delivers the perfect balance of speed and capacity
• Uses Adaptive Memory technology to optimize performance in real time by storing frequently used files and data on the solid state drive component
• Ensures compatibility with any operating system or application with a standard 9.5mm notebook drive form factor and the characteristics of a traditional 7200RPM drive
• Offers all the benefits of SSD performance with the high capacity, storage, battery life, power consumption and heat generation of a traditional hard drive

A Hybrid HDD For My MacBook Pro

In 1994, while working for the Singapore Press Holdings; I discovered the versatility of the Apple Macintosh computer.

My wife thought I had gone loco because I took a S$8,400-00 loan from the company and bought myself a Quadra 840 AV!

Mind you, the 840AV was the FASTEST Apple Macintosh you can buy and it came with 4MB of RAM!