Way too much awesome!!

[oneboyarmy]

A couple of weeks ago, a friend and former co-worker told me that her husband had dropped his MacBook Pro down the stairs and busted the LCD. Of course, the repair quote was ridiculously high and they were debating picking up a newer model anyway, so they replaced it. She said they couldn't find all of the files from their backup and weren't sure what to do, so I volunteered to help her by transferring everything from the broken machine to an external drive. She said in exchange, I could keep the broken one!

Needless to say, a little bit of work got me a 15" MacBook Pro, Core Duo 2.16Ghz... I wasn't sure what to do with it at first - part it out, fix it, yadda yadda. Fortunately iResQ had their LCD replacement service $100 off the normal cost - so I shipped it off and paid $300 for the repair! They also did a full diagnostic on it and found no further issues! It arrived back to me on Tuesday, I maxed the RAM to 2GB and it's zooming along running Snow Leopard.

I will also add that I got NIB copies of MacOS 8.1 and Corel Painter IX (Upgrade) for $9 each! Having an OS X native version of Painter as an upgrade from my copy of 6 is great so I've installed it on the MacBook Pro.

Overall, I believe I have done well!

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

8-o OOOOOOOOH, YEAAAAHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Concur! :approve:

 

[cjtmacclassic]

I stopped reading when I saw paid and repair In the same sentence.

 

[Andrevas]

I stopped reading when I saw paid and repair In the same sentence.

agreed, it should say, iFixit and repair. but good score I guess anyway man.

 

[oneboyarmy]

If you don't have anything nice to say... well, you get it. Move along.

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

< mod mode >

Concur!

< /mod mode >

Great liberation and nice job on helping out your friend, that's a bit of awesome in and of itself, comrade .

 

[oneboyarmy]

Great liberation and nice job on helping out your friend, that's a bit of awesome in and of itself, comrade .

She's a great gal, and I've met her husband and son on a couple of occasions. I was relieved I could actually help - she has the most massive iPhoto library I've ever seen. 8-o

 

[quantumii]

I also got a MBP 15" with a busted screen. Came from the same place as many of my other conquests. I got a cheap new LCD panel from ePay and did the fix myself. The optical drive required some work (jammed mechs) but I managed to repair it as well. Oh, and I replaced the keyboard as some keys were not working very well anymore.

I must say that I am really happy to have found that machine, because that re-ignited my interest in the Apple machines. No turning back ever since

 

[oneboyarmy]

I contemplated doing the repair myself, but after starting a new job and trying to get things in order I just didn't feel quite up to it. I'm not much for taking the lazy way out! I do love a challenge and all, but I made an exception this time. |)

 

[Gorgonops]

I achieved a similar expedient once. Prior to getting a "working" Titanium G4 Powerbook I salvaged a 550Mhz unit that had been sitting on a desk when a pipe burst over it. The motherboard was completely toast but I did get a working hard disk, optical drive, Airport card, and nearly new LCD panel out of it. (Ironically the system had a faulty screen replaced by AppleCare a few months before the pipe burst.) About a year later I was given a working 867Mhz machine that had a broken hinge. After making a few inquiries I found one of those places that did hinge replacements would be willing to swap me a hinge replacement service for the LCD panel I got out of the flooded Powerbook contingent on it being in working condition. It was, so all I paid was shipping.

W00t, or something.

(P.S. Note... for anyone who's not familiar with them, I didn't just swap lids between the two PowerBooks because the LCD from the water-damaged unit was the "original" 1152x768 resolution, while the 867Mhz units had the higher-res 1280x854 screen. The newer unit *might* of recognized the lower resolution if I'd swapped *panels*, but the cables didn't match so that would of been a nightmare of skinning the lids, regluing all the parts... the same things I would of had to do to change the hinge!)

 

[oneboyarmy]

I had a TiBook as a triple-boot machine way back when I worked at Now Software, had it running 10.2, 10.3 and 10.4 on different partitions. It felt like such a nice machine, and it had the high-res panel if I remember correctly.

So sad that they hinges weren't more well-made, overall they're wonderful machines.

 

[iMac600]

I contemplated doing the repair myself, but after starting a new job and trying to get things in order I just didn't feel quite up to it. I'm not much for taking the lazy way out! I do love a challenge and all, but I made an exception this time. |)

Don't mind what the others are saying. $300 is extremely cheap for an LCD panel and labour no matter how you look at it. Even though iFixit has LCD Panels for $229, you need to factor in that a panel replacement on a MacBook Pro LCD (rather than the entire clamshell assembly) isn't an easy job. To have it done professionally, fitted and tested with a free system health check thrown in on the side is a great deal. Uou can rest assured that the path you've taken with this one is the right one.

 

[oneboyarmy]

Don't mind what the others are saying. $300 is extremely cheap for an LCD panel and labour no matter how you look at it. Even though iFixit has LCD Panels for $229, you need to factor in that a panel replacement on a MacBook Pro LCD (rather than the entire clamshell assembly) isn't an easy job. To have it done professionally, fitted and tested with a free system health check thrown in on the side is a great deal. Uou can rest assured that the path you've taken with this one is the right one.

That was a big part of my logic. Not to mention iResQ proved to be VERY awesome as far as communication went, they called twice with progress updates (and I do enjoy how they popped up on my cell as "RES Q") - couldn't have asked for better service I don't think.

 

[Unknown_K]

How much is that used notebook worth with the replaced screen? Just trying to figure out the economics of replacing a screen for $300.

 

[oneboyarmy]

How much is that used notebook worth with the replaced screen? Just trying to figure out the economics of replacing a screen for $300.

Just a brief look at some resellers had the 1.83Ghz and 2.0Ghz models between around $600-$650. Those are probably a little inflated, or maybe not.

$300 was just fine as far as I know since that's all I spent, and I'll get a crazy amount of use out of it.