BootCamp 3.1 Update did NOT kill my MacBook!

There is a fancy Latin phrase that goes something like “just because something x came before y does not mean x caused y,” and I guess it’s true even if y happens immediately after x and nothing else happened in the meantime.

What I’m talking about last week’s adventure with my laptop, a MacBook Pro running Boot Camp. I’ve spent a lot of time recently getting the Windows partition updated to Windows 7, and was finally starting to get my traction back when last week’s event felled me.

To recap: Apple Software Update offered me the Boot Camp 3.1 Update, which it, it said, would make my Windows 7 happier on my Mac. “Ok,” I thought, “what harm could it do?” Well I found out when my machine did NOT revive itself after the update installed and rebooted. I immediately took it to the Genius Bar and explain how, I thought, the MBR must be hosed because it didn’t boot. The “Genius” on duty, Brian, said it was more likely a problem with the nVidia video card, a known quirk but one he thought it should be covered by Apple.

Well, he was right. I got my laptop back and it was the video card. Apple even covered the cost of parts and labor! And it’s HUGE that I don’t have to reinstall all my software (again!). The tech today said the temperature cycling loosens the soldered connections and it just happened to come apart when I rebooted. I look forward to a day where there are no soldered connections inside a PC. Is that possible? Any EEs out there?

The downside is I was psyching myself up for a new laptop and had started to look at what features I would want (SSD? Dual Screens?). And I was shocked to discover that, once you equip a PC laptop with what you want, the price can run as high or even higher than a similarly equipped Mac.

What features would you look for in a new laptop?

Another cloud to this silver lining is that Boot Camp 3.1 didn’t even get installed. Do I dare try reinstalling it?


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