For the past few weeks, my MacBook has been slow to hook up to my home wifi network. Every time I booted up or woke my Mac from sleep, there would be a short (about 20-30 second) delay before it would properly auto-connect. It doesn’t sound like a big deal, but I have lots of scheduled apps (backups, updates, IM, etc.) and they’d all report errors or fail when they couldn’t promptly find a network connection.

For quite some time, my 12” Powerbook G4 has been crashing (kernel panic) erratically. I finally narrowed down that when the left front part of the case (across from the battery) flexed (like when I picked it up on that corner), it crapped out!

After discussing this with some techs online and off, I came to the conclusion that the most likely problem was a miniscule crack in the motherboard or in some of the traces on the mobo. When the board flexed, the traces no longer made a connection, and the computer crapped out. Made sense, it fit the symptoms, and mobo damage from flexing has been known to happen with various laptops that don’t have totally firm cases. (i.e. All plastic, aluminum and titanium ones.)