MacBook Pro Retina Fan Clicking

My relatively new Apple MacBook Pro Retina that i ordered on release date has started making a noise!

About every 5 seconds, its lets out this strange Chirping sound. Initially i thought it was some software trying to notify me of something, but on closer inspection in seems to be coming from the left hand cooling fan.

Thinking it might be a stuck fan (maybe its ingested some dog hairs or something) i tried blowing air into the cooling vents to remove the obstruction, but to no avail. The laptop still chirps every 5 minutes!

My guess is that the cooling fan has packed up, which is pretty poor for a brand new laptop costing the best part of £2000!

So i have no alternative but to take it to the Apple store and get it looked at. Having never been a fan (no pun intended) of Apples, this will be my first encounter with their "Genius" staff...  Lets hope its a good experience!!

Has anyone else experienced a chirping sound from their MacBook pro retina?? was there a happy outcome??

I've ordered a Macbook Pro 13' with Retina Display..

For quite a while i've been looking for a replacement for my trusty old Asus M50 laptop. It has been, (and still is) a very capable machine, plenty of power, and with the very simple SSD upgrade its very speedy. However its getting a little long in the tooth, starting to overheat a bit, the battery no longer lasts longer than a few minutes - its just getting too old :(

A few days ago i was in PC world looking for a new laptop. All the Windows machines were a bit tacky - too much plastic, low resolution, washed out looking screens, and the "Ultra Books" all just seemed to be bad copies of Apple machines, so i though i'd take a look to see what Apple were selling.

They new 15 inch Macbook Pro with Retina screen is a great looking machine, but its just a bit too big - i wanted something a bit smaller to carry about with me so i started looking at the 13 inch Macbook Air. In fact i very nearly bought one, but it seems Apple have the retailers in a strangle hold, they are really not allowed to budge on price, and I was only able to negotiate a £30 discount... (booooo!)

With hindsight it was good that i didnt buy a Macbook Air. It has the same resolution as my current M50 and with only a 128GB SSD i wouldn't really have gained anything besides smaller size and longer battery life. Also i kind of see the Macbook Air as a kind of "Netbook", not a serious work machine... (maybe im wrong??)

Then yesterday Apple announced the release of the 13 inch Macbook Pro with Retina Display. The retina display has double the resolution of my current machine, and i was able to spec it out with a 256GB SSD and a new 2.9Ghz  i7 Intel processor. So without even seeing one, i took the plunge and ordered one!

My reasoning being that i liked the size of the MB-Air, and the new MacBook Pro 13 inch would be a very similar size, but with the MB-Pro i would get a faster processor, more SSD storage, and the "Pro"  physiologically makes me think its going to be better at its job!! (yes im crazy)

I've never really been a fan of Apple. I dont have an iPhone, i hate iTunes, and their hardware always seemed overpriced. But in comparrison to all the other Windows laptops on the market at the moment, and having played with the new 15 inch MacBooks, i realised that they really are a work of art. Kind of like the "German cars" of the computer industry - well put together, good looking, and Retina screen is truly amazing.

Anyway, its ordered now and the Apple website says it's been shipped, and should be on my doorstep on the 1st November... fingers crossed its as good as everyone says, and a worthy replacement for my Asus M50...

The quest for a new laptop continues

So im still looking for a replacement for my Asus M50, but there seems to be nothing on the market. Im looking for 15inch hi resolution screen (better than current resolution),i7 cpu, SSD drive, lightweight, preferably with numeric keypad... There just doesn't seem to be anything out there!!!

If i ignore the numeric pad, the i7 15inch Mac Book Pro with upgraded screen and SSD option looks to tick most of my boxes, but its astronomically expensive!! With all the bits bolted on, Id be splashing out almost 3k!!

Am i being a tight wad? Is £3k a reasonable price for a laptop these days? Its over double the price of my trusty Asus M50, doesn't have the movable camera or fingerprint reader. And there i was thinking technology was supposed to get cheaper!! 

Replacement for my trusty old Asus M50 Laptop

After many years of faultless service, the time has come to replace my trusty Asus M50 laptop.
Its been a great machine, solid, reliable and after the SSD upgrade it's more than sufficient for knocking out code or surfing the web.
However, its getting a little noisy, the fan is going most of the time, the battery only lasts a few minutes, and the palm rests are uncomfortably hot. I've tried sucking the dust out with a hoover, but to no avail - i guess its just starting to feel its age.
So the big question is, what will i replace it with? Ultrabooks are cool, but not big enough. Asus dont seem to have a direct replacement that offers all the same features (movable web cam, fingerprint scanner etc etc) so im open to suggestions.
Has anyone else out there found a good replacement for an Asus M50 laptop? if so, please let me know what you decided on, and how its worked out for you.

New SSD for my old Asus M50 Laptop

So my old Laptop was starting to get a bit slow, Windows Vista was taking ages to boot, and i've recently tarted using UBUNTU as my OS of choice. I wanted to make Ubutu my main OS, but didnt want to format my HDD and lose my windows installation, so my solution was to buy a new hard disk... So I did, but I took the opportunity to buy a new Solid State Disk (SSD) to see what all the hype was about.

A quick visit to Crucial.com and a few clicks later i'd ordered the "128GB Crucial m4 2.5" SSD with Data Transfer Kit"

Well today it arrived, so out came the screwdrivers and in went the SSD. Took about 5mins, to pull out the old disk and insert the new SSD - My old trusty Asus M50 laptop was reborn!!

Unfortunately i've not yet not had the time to test it out fully, but suffice to say that Ubuntu 11.04 will now shutdown, and restart in under 30seconds and most of that time is the BIOS checks so i'm very pleased so far :)