My machine just got repaired, and this seems like an auspicious occasion for starting to blog. The details follow:
While traveling abroad, my keyboard and trackpad started to become unresponsive. It looked like I had picked up some virus or spyware because every once in a while it seemed that things froze. So I deleted various items I had picked up in the Internet cafes (Boingo, Tomizone, and other useful services), backed things up, ran Symmantec and AppleJack, but found nothing.
Turns out it was a hardware problem! See the description here and a Google search (especially the long entry in Apple Discussions).
Things got bad enough for me to put the recommended piece of paper under the battery, but not so bad that I took it in to Apple. And things were fine, for a little while.
Then disaster struck! The display started freezing with really scary pixely splotches, evidently a “kernel panic”. No Googling this time. Just get those backups up to date.
Take it to the Apple Store. The display scariness, it turns out, was a separate Nvidia problem. So here’s the result: A new trackpad “topcase” and a new logic board. From the Apple paperwork …
PCBA,MLB,2.4GHZ,REV2 (PartNumber:661-4956) $1,187.50
TOPCASEASSY (PartNumber:922-8036) $233.00
HARDWAREREPAIR-LEVEL2 (PartNumber:S1491LL/A) $135.00
Warranty effective through: Dec.21,2009
Would have cost: $1,555.50!!