...and it's gone again
in [UK Mac]
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From: Kit on 27 Sep 2006 05:10 In article <4nto8tFbutd4U1(a)individual.net>, Ian McCall <ian(a)eruvia.org> wrote: > I've decided to ask for my money back. It's going to be a complicated > thing because this all went via insurance and I don' know if they'll > necessarily give me just straight cash. But honestly, I have no faith > in the current generation of MacBook Pros. Actually no, that's not > quite true. I have perfect faith in their ability to overheat and fail. I'm afraid I've not been following all of the sad and apparently long saga of your dying MBPs, but I'm wondering how the insurance got involved in what seems to be a faulty consumer product. Did one of the faulty MBPs get accidentally damaged? Kit
From: Chris Ridd on 27 Sep 2006 05:22 On 2006-09-27 10:10:48 +0100, Kit <kitzyme(a)yahoo.com> said: > In article <4nto8tFbutd4U1(a)individual.net>, Ian McCall <ian(a)eruvia.org> > wrote: > >> I've decided to ask for my money back. It's going to be a complicated >> thing because this all went via insurance and I don' know if they'll >> necessarily give me just straight cash. But honestly, I have no faith >> in the current generation of MacBook Pros. Actually no, that's not >> quite true. I have perfect faith in their ability to overheat and fail. > > I'm afraid I've not been following all of the sad and apparently long > saga of your dying MBPs, but I'm wondering how the insurance got > involved in what seems to be a faulty consumer product. Did one of the > faulty MBPs get accidentally damaged? I think Ian originally got the MBP on his insurance when a previous PB got nicked/damaged/something. Cheers, Chris
From: Ian McCall on 27 Sep 2006 05:36 On 2006-09-27 10:22:03 +0100, Chris Ridd <chrisridd(a)mac.com> said: > On 2006-09-27 10:10:48 +0100, Kit <kitzyme(a)yahoo.com> said: > >> I'm afraid I've not been following all of the sad and apparently long >> saga of your dying MBPs, but I'm wondering how the insurance got >> involved in what seems to be a faulty consumer product. Did one of the >> faulty MBPs get accidentally damaged? > > I think Ian originally got the MBP on his insurance when a previous PB > got nicked/damaged/something. That's right - my Powerbook 12" was stolen, and the MacBook Pro was an insurance-provided replacement for it. Cheers, Ian
From: Jaimie Vandenbergh on 27 Sep 2006 05:40 On Wed, 27 Sep 2006 09:08:10 +0100, real-not-anti-spam-address(a)apple-juice.co.uk (D.M. Procida) wrote: >Jaimie Vandenbergh <jaimie(a)sometimes.sessile.org> wrote: > >> >> If (and I say if, because I don't own a MacBook Pro so I'm not speaking >> >> from first-hand experience) MacBook Pros really are getting so hot that >> >> hard drives are failing, then that is a serious issue. Full stop. >> > >> >And your evidence that hard disk drives in MacBook Pros are failing due >> >to excessive heat is...? >> >> You noticed the "If"s, of course. >> >> Evidence is Ian. So that's three hard drive in at least one MacBook >> Pro, with circumstantial "Blimey that was hot" comments. > >Ian is not evidence, however unbelieveably appalling his experience has >been. Evidence would be data from the entire user-base or a large random >sample of it, adjusted to take note of different disk drive brands and >models, and compared with rates of failure for other laptop computers. No, Ian is evidence. Not statistically significant evidence, certainly. Don't take this too unkindly, but I'm rather looking forward to your own over-warm (though non-laptop) hard drive cooking itself. That won't be statistically significant either. >> Why so argumentative all the time? > >What would you like to see when people make ill-founded assertions >sustained by weak reasoning then? Abuse? Ridicule? The way you so carefully phrase things, mild abuse and ridicule is what they get when you reply to them. >> Laptops are demons for excess heat, with so little space for airflow and >> the need for fans to be both small and quiet. It's not a tricky concept. > >And yet I have never heard of any laptop from any manufacturer in which >a design flaw in the cooling system was positively identified (i.e. not >by chat-room-style speculation) as a cause of hard disk drive failures. You'll have noticed the various references recently to exploding batteries recently? There have been quotes from various (annoyingly underspecified) sources talking about thermal runaway exacerbated by laptop design, as well as the known manufacturing problem. Also not "evidence (tm procida, after humpty dumpty)" of course. A google for "dell temperature recall" will no doubt fail to satisfy you. I'd also like to point out that to a manufacturer of laptops it is economically far more sensible to send out eg ten replacement hard drives over the lifetime of an over-warm laptop, than it is to recall the laptop and replace it with a model that is designed better. Poor cooling design is not usually something that can be patched up. Cheers - Jaimie -- I like my coffee how I like my women... frothing.
From: D.M. Procida on 27 Sep 2006 06:04
Jaimie Vandenbergh <jaimie(a)sometimes.sessile.org> wrote: > No, Ian is evidence. Not statistically significant evidence, > certainly. I think you just don't quite understand how the word "evidence" works. Let's suppose, just for sake of argument, that it turns out that Ian's hard disk drives have failed because the delivery driver on his route always treats things really roughly (or whatever; it doesn't actually matter what). If this (or something else) were the case, then the drive failures could not possibly be evidence for the claim that they are failing because of excess heat. So, until you have established a very good reason for supposing that the failures are heat-induced you have no basis for claiming his experiences as part of the body of evidence. > Don't take this too unkindly, but I'm rather looking forward to your > own over-warm (though non-laptop) hard drive cooking itself. That's nice. How would you like me to take it? > >And yet I have never heard of any laptop from any manufacturer in which > >a design flaw in the cooling system was positively identified (i.e. not > >by chat-room-style speculation) as a cause of hard disk drive failures. > > You'll have noticed the various references recently to exploding > batteries recently? There have been quotes from various (annoyingly > underspecified) sources talking about thermal runaway exacerbated by > laptop design, as well as the known manufacturing problem. Ah yes, various (annoyingly underspecified) sources. In the age of the Internet, the greatest authority of all. This is what this is all about: chat-room speculation, and the sound of a thousand weblogs all linking at once; and the next thing you know is that "everybody knows". Still, I guess it's more harmless than deciding that the strange woman at the edge of the village is practising witchcraft or that a few dozen parents are into satanic ritual abuse of children. Daniele |