Well Kevin,

If it is of any consolation to you, Judie from Gear Diary appears to have some weird stuff happening to her Macbook pro too.

http://www.geardiary.com/2007/03/30/my-wearing-macbook-pro/#more-2533

I forgot to add that kernel panics are almost always hardware related and just about certain caused by bad RAM.

Macs are insanely sensitive to even marginal performing RAM that passes usual cursory hardware tests. Apple Hardware Test CD included.

If possible, boot with good old memtest CD and let run fully 24 hours or longer. There will probably be errors galore.

If clean, next suspect any and all peripherals, no matter how seemingly inconsequential. Keyboards, USB cables, slot cards, all can cause repeated kernel panics.

Last would be motherboard itself, does happen.

Dear DBL,

I feel honored to be recipient of the first personal attack I’ve ever observed at this formerly virgin site.

The phenomenon of third post choice by Mac fans guaranteed to be hostile, personal attack seducing open warfare probably means something. I guess ferocity measures victory. Whatever.

The ruin of Engadget within six months from same fate influx was tragic. Flame wars like cancer kill off useful discussion on news if subject MS, Apple, Vista, OSX or even Apple TV, it doesn’t matter.

But not here, I have too much respect for the host’s implicit civility rule.

Please.

btw, those three Mac sites suggested are unique in their 100% Mac enthusiasm while somehow still embracing open, unbiased dialog of Mac issues every user should be armed with, good or not so good. Knowledge is power.

If I was Kevin, I’d want all the backround and history unfiltered from agendas. He’s savvy enough to process everything and still end up loving Mac but with depth beyond unbridled promise sophomoric nonsense.

What’s up with jk and *his* Mac?

And this reburb woe makes me wonder how those Q1 woot buyers are doing!!

comsurgeb, the MacBook and the P1610 make a killer combination for productivity, don’t they?

Whenever I hear people complaining about bluescreens on their Windows, I can’t help thinking what they do with their PCs. I have seen bluescreen or system freeze less than 3 times since Windows XP was introduced. I have no preference between Apple and Microsoft, and have two Macs and five iPods along with five Windows boxes. But, I honestly believe the reliability of Mac is overstated while Windows don’t get due credit. Also remember PCs are open system and Windows need to support much more variety of hardware devices. If PCs were designed as close as Macs are, I bet Windows would have been even more reliable.
That said, sorry to hear your bad luck, Kevin. It seems the initial problem was never addressed. The error message seems to suggest bad memory, and I don’t understand why Apple guys replaced hard drive without taking care of seemingly obvious memory problem last time. Hope you have better luck this time.

Kevin:

FWIW, I ordered our iMac 20inch 2 GHz Core Duo with 512MB RAM, 250GB SATA drive and ATI Radeon X1600 128MB VRAM one year ago.

I thought I had the wrong order with the box came with wireless keyboard and mouse and iLife DVDs. Imagine my surprise when the System Profiler showed: 2 GB RAM, 500GB HD and 256 MB VRAM. One year later, no problems. Maybe I’m lucky!

Hope your experience gets better. I’ve been eying those refurbed MB Pros.

Yes, I am a Mac fan-boy but thanks to your blog, I am a happy P1610 owner.

Sorry bmhome1 but your post reads exactly like a spam subject line — it makes no absolutely no sense whatsoever. Reboot brain and try again. Perhaps get some sleep in between.

Good grief. He needs information absurdly easy finding offering better insight than yarns about devotion to platforms. Kevin deserves better.

And oh yeah … beware of selection bias in looking at troubleshooting websites. Remember that you are looking at a website which represents the sum total of all people with Mac troubles in the entire English-speaking world, but you are judging it like all those people are just next door. ALL troubleshooting websites are like this, and NO manufacturer can survive this loopy logic.

It’s like if you were to walk into the annual Flintstones Great Gazoo festival, and then walk out thinking that the Flintstones are worthless because every episode has a stupid floating alien in it. Needless to say, your perception is inaccurate, but try not to get too jealous when you discover that so many other people seem to inexplicably enjoy tons of perfectly good Gazoo-free Flintstones episodes. Where did all these episodes come from?!?! You didn’t see them at the Gazoo festival!!

Once you figure how to get out of your own personal Mac Gazoo festival, you’ll be okay… I know this, because everyone else I know is.

Five grey screens in one day! That’s more than the entire number of those screens I’ve seen in the history of my last two Macs. I feel bad for you buddy, but this is very far from the usual experience. I know one dude who has gone through an iMac 20″, a PowerBook G4 12″, an iMac 24″, and now a MacBook Pro with not a single grey screen among them. Another friend has a MacBook (recent switcher) and is enormously happy with no grey screens. And several other people I do geek-support have also never reported to me a grey screen. In fact, I’m the only one who has ever seen a grey screen, and that’s only because I tend to geek out and install weird stuff.

If this is a common Mac problem, then we must be the luckiest group of people on the face of the Earth!

bmhome:

Ha. Check out the Dell support site for some real laughs.

It’s all about averages. There will be problems with machines from EVERY SINGLE COMPUTER COMPANY. The question is, who has the most? Ever seen a study that documents this? Apple usually comes out on top.

I’ll make the MacBookPro shutdown history research easy:

http://www.macintouch.com/readerreports/macbookpro/topic4139.html

It’s probably the most widely issues reported laptop in years.

Repeat advice worth repeating: start visiting three Mac web sites daily for at least one week:

MacInTouch.com
MacFixIt.com
powerpage.org

The reality and truth about Apple hardware “quality” and “support” will become instantly clear FROM Mac owners.

MacFixIt reveals the soft underbelly of OSX no one ever addresses or admits exists. The issues will be reported as long as one bothers following never-ending saga.

And their precise procedure they strongly advocate for EVERY single OSX update is sobering indeed.

Boiling hot MacBook Pro’s and intense heat system instability relationship is well-documented. Google it to see real deal.

So what’s the moral of this story, YMMV? (LO)L I’d like a MAC but what’s the learning curve like for a dedicated Windows user since Windows 3.1? Is hardware part of that curve or does the software just “think different”?

Most of the Apple products I’ve purchased (new or refurbished or used) have been very reliable…

A lot more problems than usual were being reported all over the net with early production (Core Duo) 15″ MacBook Pro systems last year – maybe these were refurbished and are still problem prone?

Anyway I experienced similar problems to yours with a refurbished 12″ PowerBook G4 a few years ago – it turned out to be memory related. The PQI brand memory I’d originally purchased for a PC laptop and installed in my Mac was spec-ed properly, but caused recurring strange random problems – I replaced it with Crucial brand memory and the problems stopped.

Fast forward a couple of years, and the PQI brand memory installed in my Intel Mac mini is working fine – go figure