Macbook Random Shutdown

I thought I’d post my experience with my brand-new Macbook purchased online in June, I live in Switzerland. After about a day or two it shut down once without intervention. Thinking it was a temporary glitch I ignored it, how foolish of me. Over the past two months I’ve noticed the following:

-Macbook usually shuts down within 3 minutes after waking from a 2+ hour sleep.
-Macbook usually shuts down when ripping CDs using iTunes (high processor load), or when doing other processor intensive tasks.
-I have bootcamp, even in Windows XP the Macbook will shut down at random intervals, usually during graphic intensive games.
-Macbook would even shut down when ‘cold’, though this happened less often than when I taxed the processors heavily.
-Once the Macbook shuts down it is hard to start up again, usually I have to wait 2 minutes to let it cool down before turing it back on.
-After speaking to the Mac helpdesk I had to press Apple+Alt+P+R to reset the PRAM, however now whenever I adjust the display brightness and reboot, I will be greeted with a grey screen (no Apple logo), and I have to reset the PRAM again, very annoying. In any case RSS seems to be a problem that can only (hopefully) be solved my replacing the logic (mother) board.
-The RSS worsens over time, usually occuring 10-20 times weekly depending on what I use the Macbook for, in any case RSS should NEVER happen to a PC !

I have used and owned Dell, IBM and Toshiba laptops in the past, all running (gulp!) Windows or Linux, none of which ever shut down on me without warning…bar a BSOD. I have already advised 3 people against buying a Macbook….so Apple lost a few sales right there.

Currently my Macbook is in repair, the guy I handed the Macbook over to seemed to know what the problem was and said ‘oh yea, we’ll just replace the logic board’. I hope this will solve my problem. When I get the Macbook back in 5-10 working days, I will try the processor intensive ‘yes’ command in a terminal window right there in the Mac store…I’ll report back on my findings.

I encourage everyone with a Macbook suffering from RSS to send/give back their Macbook a.s.a.p. , be persistent, never take ‘No’ for an answer. I hope Apple will fess up that the Macbooks have severe production deficiencies and issue a recall….they really ought to tighten their production quality control, lack of quality seems severely un-Apple to me.

Best of luck solving your RSS problems!!

-rgz

Dave.

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