The Shocks and Knocks of Mobile Use with an older Macbook

 Whether you should use early A1181 Macbook in a vehicle and expose it to the heat and vibration hazards  this involves in Australia is moot. 

If you have a need to use the Macbook on road trips, make sure it is in padded bag when not use and that it is securely stored in the vehicle. 

In order to recharge the battery in the vehicle a 12volt DC power adapter will be required.

 Such units are made by after market suppliers.   The Hypershop sells what appears a decent model online. The unit is described as being suitable for all Macbook, Macbook Pro and Macbook Air models.  http://www.hypershop.com/HyperMac-Pure-DC-Car-Charger-for-MacBook-p/mbp-car.htm

Cheap units are sold on ebay by companies based in China and Hong Kong. These cost  about  $25.00. It is wise to buy the unit described as for the 60 Watt Macbook.  The Chinese unit I bought does work. However,  charging does not occur unless my vehicle engine is running. 

The Daily Trips to and from School or Uni

Students who need to travel to and from school or university need a sound and solid laptop.  Generally, the younger any laptop is, the better it will stand up to the heat and shock involved in education settings.  In a previous post I have covered my views on the reasons behind an aging laptop’s increasing vulnerability to failure.

Heat, vibration and the normal degradation of minute circuit components makes failure increasingly likely with age.  A macbook less than 12 months old is going to stand up to the rigors of educational and mobile use than a Macbook that  is 3 - 6 years old.

Buy the youngest model you can afford. And whatever you have, try to protect it from heat, vibration and shock as much as you can.  

The question to ask really is how long can I expect a laptop to remain reliable in normal use which involves daily travel, knocks and shocks?  I would say no more than 3-5 years from date of sale when new.

Many companies conduct reliability surveys. The following 2011 PC World survey provides some interesting reading.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/244419/laptop_reliability_and_satisfaction_macbooks_rule.html

The results in the above 2011 survey, where Apple Laptops led the field, are quite different from the 2009 survey results described here:

 http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9141032/Mac_laptops_less_reliable_than_ASUS_Sony_notebooks

 “Apple's line of laptops ranked fourth in a multi-year reliability survey of nine notebook makers, according to a study of 30,000 portable computers published today by a company that provides after-sale warranties. …. Over a two-year period, slightly more than 10% of Apple laptops -- the company sells two lines, MacBook and MacBook Pro -- failed in some fashion, said SquareTrade. The projected failure rate of Apple's notebooks within three years, added SquareTrade, was 17.4%.” “While only 4.7% of all notebooks failed from a hardware malfunction in the first year of ownership, that more than doubled to 12.7% by the end of year two, and then leaped again to 20.4% by the time three years had passed. SquareTrade said that the increasingly high failure rate was no surprise. "Laptops have a high usage rate," said Tseng. "People leave them on all the time, and notebook components are sensitive to heat. Two, they're portable and take a lot of abuse. And three, they're more complex than most other consumer electronics devices."

The person on a budget who needs to buy a used laptop faces big risks. Projecting the reported failure rate for aging laptops beyond 3 years results in frightening rates of failure.

From the above, it can be seen that the idea of selling your Macbook and buying another new one when your Apple Care runs out has merit if you can afford the outlay.

If you have a good working A1181 Macbook, do all you can to protect it from heat, shock and vibration.  If you need the older A1181 to run important older software,  consider buying another laptop for mobile use. Leave the old one home. 

New Solid State Drives stand up to mobile use far better than conventional hard drives. Swapping your mobile laptop's hard drive for a solid state drive provides enhanced protection to your data from the threats posed by mobile and educational use.  

Next: Work arounds for failed displays, wonky airport cards and dead audio input/output ports in the A1181 Macbook.