Macbook Phoenix

How a macbook pro early 2008, became a late-night early 2012...

In an earlier article I covered my need and use of a portable desktop (mac mini).

Otherwise I came upon an offer I could not refuse. A broken early 2008 macbook pro 15 inch.

A co-worker and co-apple-enthousiast had this laptop and I was around when he first got issues with it. A well manufactured 1600 euro laptop, that always was a pleasure to work on, always kept precious and in excellent condition! What problem could it possibly have? right!

The Nvidia issue.

It started out with magenta colored screen, screen flickering, distorted or no video.

Some research pointed out it was a known problem, for both nvidia and Apple.

Even more, Apple acknowledged the problem and put a replacement program in order, along with describing the symptoms on their own website.

Mac mini portable workstation

Here is the story of how the mini became more portable than a laptop.

With the new design introduced in 2010, it became even thinner, smoother and lighter.

That's not only more fabulous for striking the eye, it has gained a lot of portability.

Already several years it has improved the look of a desktop, made a performant media-viewing experience, made a great little server and was just plain easy and simple to use and convert windows users.

The latter also to it's entry level price and versatile use.