Apple :: Superdrive Case Warp - MacBook Pro (2008)
May 29, 2010
My son's MacBook Pro (15 inch) has a case warp problem that's probably caused by something in the superdrive pushing out the plastic strip on the front of the laptop. I suggested taking it to the Apple Store to see what it would cost to fix (probably a Superdrive replacement at a minimum). I also asked him if he'd like a new 15 inch MBP but he likes his current system despite the problems. It has a Windows XP partition and all of the software that he likes on it which would have to be moved over. I'm disappointed with this generation MBP with the nVidia problem, the failed superdrive and now the current problem.
I have the 17 inch model of the same generation but I haven't had any problems with mine. I'd personally just prefer getting him a new one and I might just go ahead and get one and set it up (he's at a university for the summer and uses his MBP for his job there).
In general, are the Aluminum MBPs more problem free than the previous generation plastic models? Are there fewer Superdrive issues?
My university had a brand new early-2008 MBP model (one left) for $1,399 so I bought it a couple of weeks ago. It has the 2.5Ghz processor, 2GB ram, 250GB HDD, 8600m GT w/ 512 vRam, and the matte display. I was trying to decide whether to buy a 2.4Ghz unibody MB, a 2.4Ghz unibody MBP, or refurbished of both. I went to talk to the people at the tech store and they showed me a brand new early-2008 model MBP (a design I happen to like more than the unibody because I am not a fan of the Sony chiclet keyboard or the new "no button" button touchpad) and I purchased it immediately.
So far I have been pretty happy with the purchase and the performance of the machine although it does get quite hot on its own. The main thing I am wondering about is upgrading the ram to 4GB and swapping out the hard drive for a 7200RPM one. The hard drive is less important to me as of right now because the higher RPM will cause more heat and drain the battery faster but what I DO want to do immediately is upgrade the ram.
The machine has 2GB PC2-5300 in it which is 667 Mhz. The bus speed on the machine is 800Mhz. I am wondering whether or not I can match the bus speed and install PC2-6400 which are 800 Mhz. If not that is fine I'll just go with PC2-5300 and pick up 4GB from Fry's today but running the faster speed would be nice.
On the hard drive front how exactly does this work? I know on a PC I can just swap out the hard drive and load a saved system image or install a new OS but does it work the same with Apple? If I swap the hard drive do I just pop in the install disks and install it?
I had received my refurbished MBP last monday, and have been using it frequently since then. It takes on average 4-5 hours to charge it fully, which is ridiculous in my opinion. And the most I can get it to last is around 2:40 with lowest brightness, microsoft office 2008 open, bluetooth off and wifi on. Shouldn't I be getting more battery time?
My photography hobby is getting more complex than originally anticipated, so I now want to upgrade my HD from the standard 120GB to something bigger, since I only have about 10 GB left.
I have been looking at the WD Scorpio Black (320GB, 7k200, priced $89 at newegg and 150 on WD site), but was wondering if it would work with my MacBook (late 07/early 08) and if there would be any difference with the sales package from Newegg and WD own site..
Also I was wondering how the performance is, and if there would be any noticeable difference between the 320 Black and a 500 Blue (both WD)?
Also, what is the procedure, when upgrading? My present drive is backed up via TimeMachine (with all docs, pictures, music and apps).
Does anyone know if it's possible to install the new mid-2009 Macbook Pro 15" battery in the late 2008 macbook pro 15"? I looked at the pictures and it seems to be an identical fit, just no screw to secure the battery but from what I see all it is is a simple change in battery./
Has anyone debated trying this? I would love the extra battery life and I don't see why we couldn't do this aside from maybe the charging being 80w compared to the 73w for the new battery...
I've just bought a new MacBook Pro 13.3, 2,4 320GB HDD. Now while waiting for it I thought I should ask you the following: what is the best protective case for Macs.
a) Incase 13" Neoprene Sleeve Plus for MacBook Pro for 40$ or
b) Speck 13" SeeThru Satin Case for MacBook Pro and MacBook40 for 50$?
or
c) Should I just get a normal case sleeve for anything between 15-30$?
If options a) and b) are preferable, would I still need a sleeve too? (I travel a lot). Also, do optioins a) and b) make Macs hotter?
I am looking for a laptop bag for my MBP. Was hoping to get some suggestios here. Preferably I would like to stay away from Messenger bags since they tend to hurt my shoulders.
I worked my off to get this laptop. So I want to protect it as much as I can for as long as I can. I realize that since this is aluminum, it may experience corrosive pitting if I'm not careful.
SO, what case is the best to prevent this and to keep scratches off? I dont care if it changes the look, just give me the best one!
Another question, how are u supposed to pull out the magsafe anyway? Everytime I try to take it out, it always feels like the edge is going to scratch near the ports
i need to know which case is good for the 13 inch macbook, other then the Speck Seethru Cases. I think the speck cases are great, but if anyone knows of any other, or better case the the Speck cases, Also if anyone knows of a silicone type case for the macbook.
I'm a proud new owner of a MBP 13-inch. couple of matters.
(1) A good skin/sleeve/cover/case to protect it on the go. Ideally I'd like a very lightweight and elegant skin or shell that's on all the time to protect the exterior from wear and tear, without trapping too much heat.
(2) I need a sleek padded case to carry the unit and typical accessories (charger, adapters, mouse) and other small items.
(3) I'm looking for a convenient laptop stand for my desk to set the MBP alongside an external monitor.
I am pretty sure the optical drive on my MBP is failing as I am having trouble installing software like windows, office for mac, and just burning stuff. So, I did a search here and look it up at ifix it, but I am not sure what is the right model I should be looking at. I have the first gen MBP with the Core Duo CPU. iFix it lists two models UJ-857-C and UJ-867. So, will both work or is one of them only going to work? I know my original optical drive could not burn DL dvds, but it seems like both of these can though?
I just bought a MBA and don't want to pay for an external drive that won't work on any other laptop. Does anyone know if there are any third party external DVD burners that will work with the MBA?
I've realized that I need to replace my MBP superdrive, this is the late 2007 MBP.
I went into About this Mac and then More Info
The disc burning is listed as MATA DVD-R UJ-857E:
and the only parts I can find on ebay are the UJ-857C [url]
notice the letter difference, since im a n00b at the whole apple parts things i was just wondering if this is the correct part to replace my drive with?
I'm recently doing a lot of video editing stuff so...
I burned a video file to a CD and tried to play it off the CD to test it, but the read speed is so slow that it keeps on lagging. And when I try to copy the file back to disk (me and my paranoid testing), it also says its gonna take like 2 minutes even though its only ~160MB.
And when I'm importing a CD into iTunes, it won't go much faster than like 8x.
Is this normal? I'm plugged into the wall if that makes any difference. I ask especially because the rated read speed according to the Apple website is 24x.
I've been off the forums for quite a while now, but it's great to be back and part of the discussion again. I missed this place!
So I've got a discussion topic:
How easy is it to swap your internal HDD and put it in the SuperDrive slot? Has anyone done this? Can this be done in-house without having to send my computer away?
I'm talking uMBP 15" - the one where you can actually open the battery pack out and flush the HDD (and ram) out.
I'm thinking of buying a SSD for my main (boot) drive and having the 320GB one swapped with the SuperDrive.
It seems most of the people I know who do a lot of burning and use of their superdrive's on the macbook pros are buying external optical drives because the internal optical drive in the mac is failing (not responsive or working anymore).
I'm just wondering, for expensive as Macs are, why is it that this is happening? I thought with the price one could expect high quality parts and not parts that fail within the first two years of owning the laptop.
Alright so I just want to know if I should be worried or not about this:
Lately, when I open the lid, the drive starts "moaning". You know that sound as if you just inserted a CD or DVD into it. It does it three times with a couple of seconds gap in between.
It still reads just fine, I just tried it with a DVD, but I'm still concerned about the sound.
Usually there is just a small and short sound when opening the lid, just like when booting up, when (as much as I can figure) the head realigns to center.
I think MS Office 2008 for Mac is a step back. I use particularly excel at university and there are a lot of utilities missing in this version (data analysis), despite all this functions were included in the old 2003 version for windows. I've read a lot of threads in this and other forums trying to find how to solve the mess. The solutions can be summarized in: 1. Use other program (iworks, open office, neo office..., but none of those programs have what I need: a power tool of data analysis and 100% compatibility with MS Office). 2. Install XP or Vista in my new MacBook Pro.
My question is, does anyone know if there will be a new version of MS Office for Mac soon?
(If the answer is yes, I won`t make any move, otherwise I`ll have to think of installing XP or Vista, bad thing for me, after three weeks I`m getting the hang of the OS X and I`m very happy with it).
i just got my new MBR with an i5 processor, and i wanted to install office 2008 so it asked me to go online to download rosetta, isn't rosetta for older macs? will my office 2008 run slowly after installing rosetta? And why isn't rosetta already installed on my new MBR running snow leopard?
I've been gaming on my MBP's 9600M GT since I got it in October and I've been pretty satisfied with the results. I just started Mirror's Edge and I get an average of 30fps outdoors on Med/High settings at max 900p res and 2x AA (I'd take off AA, but it just looks ugly to me without it). The trouble is that when I enable PhysX my fps drops down to about 26fps avg. I'd like to make up this difference with overclocking, but wasn't sure if I should.
I game about 1.5 hours at a time, and usually GPU-Z reports nothing higher than about 74C (I'm running 181.22 drivers from LV2G). I have a dinky little plastic cooler with three 80mm fans underneath it, too. I was thinking of a modest overclock, say maybe 10-15%, but was wondering what the dangers were, if any and what temps I would see. IMO the newer MBPs are MUCH better at dissipating heat than last gen, so hopefully that won't be much of a concern, plus I could always grab a program to boost the fan speeds as well right, SMTFan I think it's called. If I do go ahead and overclock, which speeds should I increase, core/shader/mem and by how much?
What say you NBR? Worth the performance gains or stupid risk on a relatively new laptop?
after getting a new 13" I have been noticing that it seldom gets warmer than 50C while in a speck case on a soft surface, while my 15" on the other hand is normally running at the high 70s and mid 80s and easily reaches the 90s if I begin watching a video on youtube when not in any sort of case and kept on a hard surface. I have been ramping up the fans using SMC Fan Control whenever I witness the machine getting warm but it makes me wonder if I have a faulty machine and is reason for me to get it checked out(it is still in warranty).
And just recently I switched to using the 9600M GT graphics card(for the first time since I got it really) and the temperatures hover at about the high 70s to mid 80s as usual but this time the fans are up to 3500-5000rpm on average without me setting anything with SMC Fan Control. Even just letting the machine idle for awhile doesn't get the fans to lower to 2000rpms(which I would assume is the expected normal speed considering my 13" seldom revs up a hair past 2000rpm).
I generally leave my 15" MBP on all the time(5 days/week), or put it to sleep whenever I am going to transport it(as I am sure most of us do). What I constantly have running is:Firefox(with around 40 tabs)Xcode or Eclipse(maybe both, but definitely one of them)Terminal(with a handful of tabs[3-7])AdiumPreview(with up to 15 or so documents open)iTunes
I'm curious if the programs are identical, or if there is still a difference between the products? Ideally I'd like to have Office running in OSX, however if I have to I will run it in a VM. Mind you I'd like to avoid the headache of opening a VM to check my mail...
I have an issue with my MBP when I'm using vista. It just freeze after a few hours and I don't know why (I don't think that it is the network card driver, as suggested in other posts because I installed the driver provided there.
I just know that it is a driver issue because I got a blue screen with a notification from windows and it said that windows is shutting down to prevent damages to the computer because of a problem with a driver.all the drivers are from the Leopard DVD (excluding the network card driver).
