It’s no ground breaking news to anyone, I’m a Mac user. It’s been more than a year I’ve switched and there is no turning back. At that time I ordered the almighty 2,16Ghz Core Duo, 2Go RAM and 100Go HD@7200 MacBook Pro (1st gen). Fast, powerful… I really enjoy it. But when I remember the pristine days of my MacBook Pro, I’m a bit surprised to see how it has become today.

Yes, my (3,000 €) MacBook Pro is dying in my hands.

Retrospectively, I don’t think I’ve not taken good care of my Mac, but I guess overheating (and more recently 84°C…) and battery problems have taken it down. Since the very first days of its life with me, my Mac has suffered (although it has never told me so directly ^^) from over-heating. The use of smcFanControl has kept it under control, but today it seems barely have any effect, even at 5,000 or 6,000rpm. Right now, with Safari opened and Skype running, I’m having a whooping 80°C (22.0% of processor use).

But the most annoying thing these days (not only these days in fact, it’s been several months already) is the (well known) battery problem. Months back, I was using my MacBook Pro far from the AC plug, and without any warning/notice (and in the middle of an important work of course) it shutted down.
After booting up again, the battery said it was empty… but prior to the shutdown it was printing 30% left. Fortunately I did not experienced (yet?) the Swelling Battery thing. But that’s not all, as it was really annoying, I bought a new battery (and a new charger as I had the MagSafe twisting problem… yes, bad luck… did I mentioned I also have the annoying whine problem??)… but few weeks later the problem appeared again… at 40%: power-down!

It all appears to me that the problem isn’t due to the battery but to my very own MacBook Pro. Even with the Battery Update Patch of Apple, nothing went better. I guess I should have subscribed to the Apple Care plan, or at least refrain from buying the very 1st batch of MacBook Pros.

So what’s next? I think I’ll let this one die peacefully at home (as I can’t use it as a laptop anymore) and buy a new MacBook Pro (15-inch, 2.2GHz with 2GB memory).

I just hope Apple won’t release an ultra-powerful/ultra-portable MacBook Pro with 10+ hours battery-life in the coming weeks/months!