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