Re: [MLUG] PowerBook HD died :(

["Jonathan King" <EMAIL:PROTECTED>]

On 8/13/06, Brent Deterding <EMAIL:PROTECTED> wrote:
> I run my Powerbook 15" alum with the lid closed hooked up to an
> external monitor. Previously I had it flat on my desk. I believe this
> caused excessive heat, which cause the HDD (Seagate Momentus 5400rpm)
> to die recently. The laptop is just over a year old.

Were you still under Applecare? They could or should check the heating
issue as well, especially if that's what you think caused the problem.
On the other hand:

> I replaced the HDD with a Seagate Momentus 7200rpm (wow it flies) and
> bought a Targus Coolpad to elevate the laptop

It sounds like you have just joined the "take apart your Mac notebook
and replace the obnoxiously difficult to access hard drive" club.
Welcome!  Has Nathan taught you the secret handshake?  I've done this
six times (on three different notebooks) myself.  It's going to be a
rare club because, in a fit of engineering, they put the drives in the
MacBooks in a much more sensible place, so that won't count.

> Lid still closed and
> I'm keeping an eye on the temperatures. They seem OK despite the fact
> that PowerBooks run hot.
>
> Does anyone else have temps to compare against?
> Battery                 91.4F/33.0C
> PS Bot          125.6F/51.8C
> Proc Bot                130.1F/54.5C
> Proc/Cont Bot   136.4F/57.8C
> Trackpad                106.7F/41.5C

The Powerbook runs hot, but there's no way the trackpad should be 106,
and I'd be a bit suprirsed if the thing was engineered to be 136 at
the processor.

> Perhaps it wasn't heat and laptop HDD suck - but this Seagate has a 5
> yr. warranty and I've had excellent history with Seagate which makes
> me wonder. Interesting point - I made it a point that anything I
> could do with a Mac I could do with a PC and vice-versa. I store all
> my data on my central Linux server (save IMAP email). This meant that
> when the HDD died I didn't miss a beat - iTunes, printing, email,
> word/powerpoint docs, etc. - all worked and nothing slowed me down. I
> consider this to be pretty cool and the only real issue it raises is
> that I save docs in multiple formats (Pages and Word - which really
> is no big thing at all to me).

That's a very reasonable and geek-worthy setup. I saw somewhere some
Applescript hackery that would allow you to more easily save Pages as
both formats, or would convert a hard drive's worth of Word to Pages,
and stuff like that.  Pages 2.0 still isn't my cup of tea (except for
making scientific posters; it is absolutely the best tool EVAR for
that), but the improvement from 1.0 was gratifying.

On a barely related note, I've been using VBacs (emacs keystroke
editing for Word) for a month now, and I can highly recommend it.

jking

_______________________________________________
members mailing list
EMAIL:PROTECTED
http://mlug.missouri.edu/mailman/listinfo/members