24 Hours old and going horribly wrong

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Your Mac's Specs
Mac book, white, intel thingy, 120gb, gosh what do you say!!!
Hi I have switched to a Mac as my laptop after many years with Mr Gates and his pals, My buddy who is an avid Mac fan convinced me of the move, so let me explain the issue.

5 Days ago bought the highest spec'd Mac book I could, got home it starts, connects with my network all is well. 2 hours later I get a grey screen with a box in the middle saying, Hit power Button, having now spoke to Apple Support this is termed a Kernal Panic!! Anyway this has happened over and over again, so Mac insisted I returned it to the store and exchanged it for anouther machine, they said it was hardware failure. So I picked up the new Machine Friday and have now had 4 Kernal Panics again and have trouble staying connected to my wireless network.

I have downloaded all the relevant updates, have not installed any software yet like Photoshop but still having problems connecting to the net via wireless but fine with the ethernet in the side.

Any advice would be appreciated, but really getting to the point of ditching Mac and going back to PC, at least when that has a problem 9.9 times out of 10 I can sort it myself.

Thank you in advance for any assistance, and PLEASE remember i am a novice user so may not understand some of the stuff you suggest :[
 
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Oz.....near the Wizards home
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iMac 24' 7 Snow Leopard + Parallels and Win 7 | 30 Gb iPod | Canon EOS 400D
Hi Tjw1904, I sympathise. My Mac Book Pro lasted just long enough for me to have spent 6 hours setting it up. Then in the middle of a firmware update it just died. Rang the store and tried everything I could think of. I was shattered as it was Friday night when it happened. Saturdays phone call didn't help so I had to get through Sunday witha dead Mac, take it back Monday and then wait three days for it to get replaced.

Thankfully no problems this time round. But when I think of Windows I think at least I know how to fix things too. But then I stop and think. Why should I have to fix things in the first place. Surely after spending the money it should just work. I then I remember how many times I have been at wits end trying to fix yet another Windows error....hours and hours of frustrations over the years.

I can't offer you an explanaition as to what has happened but maybe you got two from a bad batch - it happens. Or maybe you have made the same error when setting things up. I thought for a while that I had been impatient during the firmware update after checking the forums (on a PC) and hearing that sometimes they can be a bit slow to load and reboot. Get someone at the store or someone such as your friend to go through the process, after all they do do things differently to what PC users are used to having happen.

I love my Mac now that I am getting used to the differences....once you've had Mac you'll never go back. LOLOL
 
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I believe there is a widespread problem with the latest portable (laptop) airport cards. i know that doesnt help, but maybe it explains.
 

bobtomay

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Texas, where else?
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15" MBP '06 2.33 C2D 4GB 10.7; 13" MBA '14 1.8 i7 8GB 10.11; 21" iMac '13 2.9 i5 8GB 10.11; 6S
Bought mine in December rather than go Vista. Had panics start May20th. Mine are not as severe as yours and are not reproducible yet as I just had the 6th one yesterday. I have however, read a lot on the issue of the airport cards causing panics.

You can look at the panic log by going to Macintosh HD - Library - Logs - panic log, to verify Airport Atheros is causing it. It will look like this.

In my research I found several people that could connect at school, work, home, etc. and had no issue except in a single location. Ended up being tied to specific routers. I know this is not good either, but what you might try is check for a firmware update for your router. Just an idea.

MaDDoG makes a good point. With 2 of 'em showing the same issue, think I would not only take this one back, but go online wirelessly at the Apple store or somewhere else to verify it is only the card and not the combination of the card and your router. And sounds like it makes sense to get an appointment to have them set up a 3rd one if you're going to give it a shot.
 

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