Rubenerd

Without home internet and the huge difficulties I've already eluded to with publishing blog posts from the university computer pools I didn't think I could be bothered going through the rigmarole (sounds like a dip), but this warranted the effort. This entire post summarised in one line: the new MacBook Pro inverter I ordered arrived, and it fixed the dead screen problem! I have my travel companion back!

Inverter for the Introvert, sounds like a sitcom title

After worrying that it might not work after I ordered it all the way from the States, I finally had some time yesterday evening to install the new display inverter in my discrete construction MacBook Pro. It took well over an hour to deconstruct the machine and the display assembly, but when I plugged it all back in again and turned it on the screen lit up again for the first time in weeks! Success!

It seems the Snow Leopard MacBook Pro black screen issue some people have had was a complete coincidence, for my machine it was a hardware problem that stuck around after rebooting and installing other OSs. If you've had the same problem with your MacBook Pro where the screen backlight refuses to turn on, you could have a shot inverter too.

I ordered my replacement inverter (Apple ID 922-7191) from PowerbookMedic.com and could not have been happier with their service.

Thoughts

This was the very first portable Intel Mac model ever shipped back in 2006, it has a 32bit Core Duo CPU with a maximum of 2GiB of 667MHz DDR2 RAM. It was starting to feel its age with Leopard, but with Snow Leopard its felt much "snappier" while executing regular desktop tasks and I thought I could perhaps extend the life of it a bit longer. When the screen died I had started to think planned obsolescence was kicking in!

In fact this machine does something that the current generation 15" MacBook Pro can't: accept ExpressCards. Given how critical they are to my workflow (added FireWire 800 and eSATA ports, wireless modems, 8 in 1 card readers, a super fast solid state drive) I'm hoping Apple reimplements them in their next hardware refresh for the 15" line, then I'll upgrade. In the meantime, this machine is once again performing its duties well :).

In the meantime I'll be looking into upgrading the internal hard drive to a 500GB one and perhaps even swap out the optical drive for another internal hard drive. Having 1TB of internal storage in a notebook would be fantabulous. Fantabulous sounds like a brand of grilled cheese sandwiches. Wait, no it doesn't.

I have my venerable MacBook Pro back, and I'm so happy ^_^.