MacBook Woes with some to's and fro's..

So after seven, or is it eight, visits to my local Apple Store with no resolution of the freezing problem I was experiencing on my MacBook, I had ended up with virtually a new machine wrapped in a slightly worn skin.
With more RAM (up from 2 to 4 GB), a new hard drive (up from 250 GB to 500), a new Logic Board and finally a new Airport card I went away hoping that things had been sorted.
Unfortunately it was not to be.
After a few days the freezing issue crept back in and got to the point were it was freezing mid boot as well as doing simple tasks. I had been told to return by the very helpful guys on the Genius Bar and so today I did just that.
I expected to hear the stampede of Geniuses out the back door of the store as they spotted me arrive but no, I was greeted as usual. I sat down and explained to the allocated Genius (who I had seen before) that the problem was still there.
Enough is enough was the answer - we'll give you a new machine.

Surprise or what?

This is (was) a four and a bit year old MacBook (late 2008 model) and the Applecare had expired in December 2011, so to be informed it was being replaced was not what I'd expected.

Sure enough, after a short wait, a new MacBook Pro was brought out (13.3", 2.9GHz dual-core Intel Core i7, 8GB RAM, 750GB hard drive) and handed over to replace the old MacBook.

I've railed against Apple previously over software (iPhone and Mac) but I cannot do anything but praise the staff of the Apple Store - they could quite easily have sent me packing with a 'we can do no more" attitude, but having waived the costs of the repairs carried out previously, the final solution was a new MacBook Pro.

MacBook back....

Been having some issues with the late 2008 MacBook recently. It had started to freeze up at odd times since installing Lion and refusing to wake from sleep. After various attempts to figure out the issue I took it into the Apple Store for a "genius" to check.
My 2GB of RAM was pretty much useless as the "genius" pointed out using Activity Monitor - just running a couple of YouTube videos dropped the spare memory down to around 20MB.
So, installed more RAM in the hope that would sort it out.

No use, still freezing, so back to the Genius Bar. Next diagnosis was a possible faulty hard drive connector cable and a overnight test bench session to see what was occurring.
News came back the other day that the hard drive was on it's way out.
I was tempted to install a 256GB SSD if the HD was the culprit, but in the end opted for a like for like replacement as the failed HD had lasted four years and if the new one lasts as long I'll be getting something a bit more modern by then.

So, having reinstalled everything from Time Machine I appear to be back up and running...