Concerned Mac Lover

I recently bought a new MacBook Pro 15 inch about a month and a half ago. I got it at the beginning of this semester. I absolutely love it but I have a problem. If I am on it for a few hours like 2 or 3 the screen develops dark bars that are vertical. I bought many programs for it also. Is this a problem with many macs? I ask this because my first mac was a iBook and I had the screen blackout on me after like two years of owning it. I have also owned three ipods and after about two weeks to a month and a half of purchasing that product a new version comes out. For example I first bought a ipod mini and two weeks later the nano came out. I then bought a 30 gb video and one month later the new version with enhanced lighting and longer battery life came out. My last one was a ipod touch and three weeks later the new version that has more gb came out. The reason I mention this is that because I noticed you have a new line of notebooks coming out and with my luck I get to see that once again I am spending just as much money but always getting yesterdays technology. Is there anyway of exchanging my not so old notebook for a new one?

There is a known issue with the MacBook Pros released in early 2008, using the NVIDIA 8600M graphics chip. Apple has extended the warranty to two years for anyone experiencing GPU failure. Typically this problem manifests itself by the chip completely dieing (i.e. you can't get a display at all), but to me, the black bars might be indicative of an overheating problem.

I don't believe this particular problem to be germane to all Apple products, but in this particular case, I think you have a warranty item that should be addressed by Apple. I would schedule an appointment at an Apple store to have it looked at, or contact Apple Care for tech support.

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