Slashdot Mirror
MacBook Users Fix Trackpad Problem with Origami Paper
yonnage writes "Some Apple MacBook owners are plagued with what seems to be a defective trackpad button. The button, when pushed, seems "squishy" and sometimes even unresponsive. While these MacBook owners are getting turned away at the Apple Genius Bars, they have come up with a custom and unique solution to the problem. A piece of paper, placed strategically under the battery pack where the trackpad is located, seems to fix this problem for most users."
Paper over hot battery? Fire risk?
Oh.
I purchased a MacBook two weeks ago. At first, it was slightly irritating me. I like that responsive, affirming click when I press the mouse button. But then I realized that only the left and right sides of the button are squishy. The middle of the button doesn't have this problem, so train yourself to push it there. It becomes second nature quickly. (Perhaps YMMV.)
Or go into the system preferences and set it so that tapping the trackpad clicks. (Tapping it with two fingers to 'right-click' is nice too...)
- sm
Not sure what you mean by Apple "combining the consumer and pro brand into 'MacBook'," but:
MacBook = consumer-class notebook
MacBook Pro = professional-class notebook
> GO BACK TO THE STORE AND DEMAND A PROPER PRODUCT!
That works at many stores in the US, but it does not at the Apple Store. They charge a 10% restocking fee. December 2004 when I bought a new 17" PowerBook, it had a broken keyboard out of the box. Apple wanted a 10% restocking fee to replace it. That would have cost me almost $300. My other option was to send it in for repair, but Apple was out of the backlit keyboards so it would have taken over six weeks to get it repaired. After fighting with the manager for almost four hours the manager that showed-up for the next shift offered the solution of letting me return the laptop with the large restocking fee and then letting me buy a demo unit for $300 off. Since I was tired and was facing a three hour drive home, I gave-in. Paying that much for a used laptop sucked, but it was the best I could do.
Note: The manager and two Apple employees strongly suggested I not take advantage of Apple's DOA policy. The agreement you have to sign in order to request to take advantage of that specifically states that you will be charged a $400 handling fee if they feel that the device was not DOA or was damaged when unpacking it or during the initial use. I didn't want to risk that.
Actually if you look at the pictures (not sure if these articles have the full pictures, I RTFA'd earlier when it was posted on the Apple forums) the paper is held in a small circular indent above the battery. The battery holds it in place and it should not escape, unless Macbook batteries start swelling like the Macbook Pro batteries and push some gap into the mix.
Shawn's Tech Articles
Well, they did drop the 12" PB, forcing those who want/need a smaller form factor to sacrifice for the cheaper MacBook.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
For what it's worth, I just spent a few hours reading MacBook reviews, researching whether I should buy one or go with a regular Wintel laptop.
:(
Here are the MacBook problems people wrote about:
1. the bottom gets very hot (one person compared it to a vulcano), not suitable for laptop work
2. plastic around the screen likes to come off
3. the white MacBooks get "stained" where people rest their hands. These stains cannot be cleaned with any kind of a cleaning agent.
4. trackpad problems like this one.
Guess which type of a laptop I'm now leaning towards?
Simpy
That's why it is smarter to always pay expensive hardware purchases with your credit card. If the vendor gets silly, just let your credit card provider fight on your behalf.
The other thing is that I know quite a few people with macbooks and none has yet had any problems as those mentioned on slashdot. My guess is that many mac users tend to be more active online than other laptop users, and hence make much more of a buzz when somethings wrong.
But anyway, my point is that with the desktops (mac mini or imacs) you've got a solid piece of computing machinery.
i'm not at all trying to bait y'all mac people... but if i paid as much as the macbook costs for a laptop... i'm expect the thing to work... without me having to fold up little pieces of paper and cram them in the battery compartment. i'm just wondering... kinda makes u wish you run osx on commodity x86 hardware???? seriously i swear i've never had to cram little pieces of paper into my thinkpad.
actually I am happy to see you, however that is in fact a banana in my pocket.
Yep! The thing is, whenever you have a company releasing new products that are designed significantly differently than the "norm", or differently than their own previous products, *and* they're not exactly a "market leader" in sales to begin with - you're going to have some flaws in first revisions.
I bought a Macbook Pro about 5 weeks after they were released, and mine arrived completely dead. It was obvious it was getting power, but that was about it. No display or sound.... That was quite irritating, but to Apple's credit, they shipped me a replacement that arrived with absolutely no issues. (None of the buzzing, whining, extreme overheating, sound only out of one speaker, or any of that other stuff you see complaints about on these machines.) I've used it almost every day since then and so far, so good.
I also had a "rev. 1" PowerMac G5 dual 2.0Ghz tower that always seemed to be just a little "flaky". I must have owned it for close to a year, using it all the time, and still couldn't really pin down anything specific. It just crashed a little more often than it should have, and had an above-average number of odd problems with "sleep" mode and so forth, which seemed to always vary with OS X updates. (And yes, I swapped out RAM, reformatted the drives and reinstalled OS X from scratch, etc. etc.) I ended up selling it and getting a newer revision of the exact same PowerMac G5 and to this day, I use this one and it's rock solid by comparison.
So yeah, my recent experience bear out the fact that Apple products are good, but only after you give them a chance to iron out the bugs in a particular model.