Macbook Woes
Its really annoying when things just don't work. Your clock, your car, your...anything really. Its even more annoying when the only computer that you have available to you isn't able to run.
The scorching temperatures Macbooks are able hit without melting down have been rife on the internet. I've even seen a case where some chap's Mac had literally melted while watching a DVD.
Lucky for me, my Mac was spared its life while the power adaptor had taken the blow. You can imagine my surprise when I noticed a scorch mark on the wire, leading to the start of my woes. I really wasn't keen on buying a new power adaptor because it cost a whopping 89 EUR!! Do you know how much stuff I could buy with 89 EUR? So I looked online and found some very well documented cases of macbook power bricks spontaneously melting down.
Apple's website even mentioned that if the wire melted, you could get Apple to replace it free of charge, no matter if the warranty of your computer has expired. I decided it was best to find myself an apple store and get a replacement.
I made my trek to Nürnberg with my friend with the intention for me to find the power adaptor. Despite drawing my own map with the main streets, the store was still extremely hard to find. We had run into a couple of people on the way, and one chinese girl who happened to have a real map. Soon enough, we had arrived at Nürnberg's premium Mac reseller: Computstore.
I was expecting to be able to walk into the store, and get a quick replacement of my adaptor. I had read on quite a few forums that that was the usual way of getting a replacement was to show up with your adaptor and get a quick exchange. I had it a little hard. First of all, they wouldn't do anything on the spot. I tried convincing the lady that they really should swap out my adaptor on the spot. She didn't think so and persuaded me to give her my adaptor, e-mail her my Mac's serial number and wait until the following week to see if they would fix it.
Totally upset, I walked out and vowed to not buy anything from the store because I was sure they wouldn't fix it. Sure enough, they didn't.
I walked in to the store the following week to pick up my old power adaptor. Even though I vowed to not buy anything from that store, it was the most convenient place to get what I wanted and everywhere else it was just as ridiculously expensive: 89 EUR.
The same lady I dealt with recognized me immediately and was seemed to be sincerely apologetic that my power adaptor wasn't fixed. Seeing how she was quite sorry I decided to just buy the power adaptor. What was really odd is that they didn't have any in stock! Knowing from the previous week that I really needed a power adaptor, she scavenged in the back room and pulled out an 85 watt Macbook pro power adaptor from a company computer. When she did that, I knew it was good because there would be a discount. Maybe not much, but its still a discount.
In the end, she gave me 5 EUR off, and I walked out with a better view of the store and a new Power adaptor.
I figured my Mac adaptor had probably burnt itself out because of stepping the power down from 220V, combined with the decreasing efficiency of the thing. I wanted to make sure that my new adaptor didn't suffer the same fate.
Right near my German class, there's a very interesting garbage bin. They toss out everything related to computers. Printers, motherboards, keyboard and monitors. One time, I picked up an almost new keyboard which is now being used in my office. Then a few weeks later I grabbed a Microsoft Natural Keyboard Pro. After an intensive cleaning, it was good as new. I figured that for big companies, its much easier to just toss things out.
The find of the day though was two heatsinks. One of them came with a motherboard which I duly grabbed as well. It was great because now that I had two heatsinks, I could sandwich my power adaptor in between the two chunks of metal and keep it relatively cool. Think of it as a radiator for my power adaptor.
So what conclusions can I draw from this? First off, Magsafe power adaptors get really hot and second, if you want to prevent a macbook meltdown, search in the garbage for some heatsinks.
