MacBook Pro Special Report: Dead-on-arrival units

March 17, 2006 1:39 PM PST

As with any new model rollout, a few MacBook Pros are arriving dead.

One reader writes:

"I got my MacBook Pro (2.16GHz, 2GB RAM, 100MB 7200 RPM drive) this morning and needless to say was tremendously excited. I turned it on, got the chime, and then all hell broke loose; it immediately had a kernel panic. That was all she wrote as subsequent attempted reboots did absolutely nothing; no chime, no drive spin up, no nothing.

"I checked Apple's Knowledge Base and found this article , which also didn't help.

"So I called Apple's support line. Four support technicians and 90 minutes later I was told I would have to send it back and that they would be sending me a new one. Acceptable right? Wrong. I now have an estimated ship date of March 15th-21st. This is a text book case in how to completely bungle a customer support incident. They should have simply acknowledged the defective product and sent me a new one within a couple days rather than make me wait 4 weeks."

MacFixIt reader Tom writes:

"After waiting about a month, I was excited to receive my custom configured MacBook Pro 2.0 notebook this morning via FedEx. (I configured it with 2 512MB DIMMS and a 7200RPM 100GB drive.) I unpacked it and powered it on, but no display. I hear what sounds like the hard drive spinning up and the fan coming on, and get a white light on the button that opens the lid, but no chime or any other sign of life. None of the keys on the keyboard seem to be doing anything either. (Pressing caps lock doesn't light up the light on it, etc.)

"I went through all the troubleshooting procedures already. (Reset PMU and open firmware, etc.) No change. Even tried removing both DIMMS and re-seating them and no luck. Just getting ready to give Apple a call about this one. Argh!"

One reader writes:

"Another DOA report. My MacBook Pro came yesterday morning and I knew something was up pretty quickly. After booting it from the battery I plugged in the power adapter and almost immediately the computer shut down without warning. This random shutdown happened off and on through out the day while I tried to figure out if there was anything I could do. I did all the steps on Apple's MacBook Pro troubleshooting page.

"The shutdown is probably not heat related since it shut down at least once while it was sleeping. It isn't software related since it shutdown on boot one time. It also shut down while running the extended hardware test on the install CD.

"I also reinstalled OS X even though I was fairly certain that wouldn't help. I called Apple this morning to get a repair or replacement. They are calling back later today to let me know if Apple's engineers want to "capture" the MacBook Pro for analysis. If not I get to have it replaced or repaired.

"Mine is a MacBook Pro 2.16 GHz, 2*512 MB RAM, 100 GB 7200 RPM HDD. Between shutdowns it is an impressive computer. Extremely fast."

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