The day we returned from China, I went to the Apple Store to drop off my MacBook Pro for service. Kernel panics, sudden restarts, and crash on sleep were not things a brand-new MacBook Pro should be doing. I had to wait over a week for the service technicians to do their job, and today I picked up my MBP. It’s not quite the same MBP, as Apple replaced the logic board and RAM.
The first thing that I did when I got back home was to plug in my 250GB FireWire Hard Drive and perform a SuperDuper Clone of the drive. 7 minutes into the copy, I received yet another kernel panic! This was not building my confidence in the repair to say the least. Nonetheless, I restarted the computer, made my clone, wiped the computer and reinstalled OS X.
It’s 22:56 right now, and I’m just about finished installing all third-party software on to the machine: Aperture, Final Cut Pro, Transmit, Fusion, Yojimbo, etc. Here’s to an end to kernel panics, sudden restarts, and crash on sleep!
tow.com 
Yikes! I like Macs, but this does not instill any confidence in them. Nor does my friend Lisa’s experience with three of them breaking (including a Mac Mini, iMac “iLamp”, and 15″ Powerbook G4), or my friend Rhea’s experience with her iBook G4 that she kept bringing over to my house to try to fix (unsuccessfully). Not to mention my former iBook G3 which fried a logic board twice. I was hoping the Macbooks would be more robust, but this does not seem to be the case…
Of course, I also know numerous people with problems with Winblows machines (including my own computers, which inexplicably now take 3X longer to boot up than 2 years ago). It just comes to show that all computers are still fairly fragile and much less reliable than a modern-day Hyundai, so now I just get the cheapest computers I can find and treat them as disposable!
-Felix, who is typing this on a 2001 Dell Latitude (with Pentium III) that he picked up for $180 in 2006 :)
Felix – I’ve been drafting up an article on all of this e-waste I delivered to GoodWill the other day. Your decision to save money by buying the cheapest computers works is a good one as long as you don’t work in an industry that demands the latest and greatest. Sadly for me, working with huge photo files and HDV video means I’ve got to plunk down the $$$ every few years :(
Yes, having to do professional photo and video editing is certainly a legitimate reason to have the latest and greatest equipment. Good thing that is also something you can write off on your taxes!
Unfortunately, I also need a quicker computer for CAD work, but fortunately a client has provided me that. (And deals with maintenance… I already had to send it back to them once for repair.)
I’m glad your Macbook is up and running again; I will send positive thoughts your way so that no more kernel panics occur :)