A few months ago, my old Macbook Pro suffered the infamous NVidia graphics card failure, the repairs are supposedly free from apple. See here:
For most people the machine’s display would simply be black, but for me however I can still get into Mac OS X and Linux. For the Mac OS X it defaults back to a VESA driver I think, which works, and for Linux I had to fall back to the nv driver.
Took the computer into a authorized dealer, they looked at it, ran this funny test, and decided that my error is borderline, and didn’t qualify for the free repairs. I don’t know how they decided it was borderline, but I didn’t particularly care since deep inside I wanted to buy a new unibody hehe.
Bought one 2 days ago, on its way here now. Originally wanted the Matte screen, but the higher res annoyed me. My old macbook pro has the 1440×900 Matte, and it is the best screen I have ever had. Thought I’d try a shinny one this time.