My MacBook Pro Is Ready To Retire. It Told Me So

I think my computer is telling me it wants to retire.

I got my MacBook Pro in June of 2006 and it was lightning fast compared to my old 1998 PowerBook G3. Computer-wise, I was on top of the world. Faster, lighter, bigger hard drive, bigger display, OS X, USB--the whole package.

More than seven years later and it's showing it's age. The operating system won't update and neither will most of the software. The 2gb of RAM is insufficient, the 100gb hard drive is full and I have three external hard drives--all full and the optical drive rarely works properly. And something is really slowing the system down and I don't know what. The spinning beach ball is NOT my friend. But all that stuff is to be expected for a computer of that age.

Lately I've been having trouble with a symptom that reaches new levels of annoying. After a few hours of use, my LCD develops a yellow tint. Anywhere white should be, I see yellow. It's very gradual and in it's beginning stages is hard to notice unless you look at a TV or the iPhone or some other white LCD screen. But after a few more hours, it begins to really hurt my eyes. No one I've talked to has ever heard of this happening (and a few think I've lost my marbles) and I can't find a mention of it anywhere online.

A few weeks ago, I heard some growling and grumbling coming from the guts of the machine, virtually identical to the sounds I heard right before Apple replaced the cooling fans. A few days later, it gradually went away.

A few days ago I started having an even more serious problem. The computer froze and I had to force it to shut down. When it restarted, I'd get to the login screen, login, and then after seeing the desktop for a few seconds, it would kick me back to the login screen. Over and over again. It started fine with the CD so after a few days of trying to find the problem, I erased the hard drive and restored from Time Machine. Problem fixed...for now.

I have several gift cards from Best Buy so I plan to buy an external monitor in the near future. It's just a temporary fix. I wonder if a souped up Mac Mini from the Apple Custom Build shop would do everything I need.