17" Powerbook Owners Crying to Apple

S

Skeptik

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Numerous PowerBook owners are crying out to Apple amidst rampant display issues that are reportedly plaguing their recently-purchased 17-inch notebooks. Many of the affected models, which develop one pixel-wide vertical lines of various primary colors on the screen, begin displaying symptoms about 1-1.5 years after the owners made their purchases. Many customers decided not to purchase Apple's extended AppleCare warranty, expecting that the top-end notebooks would last longer than one and a half years before exhibiting serious issues. Disgruntled PowerBook owners are flocking to Apple's own support forums for answers, and a website has already launched to document each case in one centralized location. Currently-affected owners describe the notebooks as having shipped from the W8 factory based in Shanghai around April of 2005.
http://www.macnn.com/articles/07/01/03/powerbook.owners.cry.out/
 
Geez why are they so surprised ???.
Macs are now assembled by the lowest cost bidder in China and you pay top dollar for the priviledge :D.

PS
My Lenovo is still going strong ... no random shutdows or leaking batteries or funky coloured vertical lines ;).
 
@Skeptik - thanks for the heads up - mine came out of the factory in March :eek: but touch wood its still going strong. I've been told I should consider upgrading to a MBP soon anyway so hopefully it will hold out a while longer. :)
tibby.dude said:
My Lenovo is still going strong ... no random shutdows or leaking batteries or funky coloured vertical lines ;).
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You might want to make sure your Lenovo isnt on the battery recall list either - http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/document.do?sitestyle=lenovo&lndocid=BATT-LENOVO seeing as we should all know by now it was a Sony problem.
 
tibby.dude said:
I checked already :).
I have a 3000 series and not the Thinkpad branded range.
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Glad to hear it - those cheap bits of generic plastic all look the same to me anyway. :)
 
If you do not sign the "extended warrenty" you should by South African law have a 3 year warrenty on the product.
 
w1z4rd said:
If you do not sign the "extended warrenty" you should by South African law have a 3 year warrenty on the product.
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Really? How does that work?
 
w1z4rd said:
If you do not sign the "extended warrenty" you should by South African law have a 3 year warrenty on the product.
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In other countries, buyers have the option of taking Apple's own extended warranty at extra cost. Sadly this is not available in SA. It's a shame because Apple products have a fairly high defect rate.

As far as I know (correct me if I'm mistaken) you are only entitled to a 1-year warranty on SA goods.
 
Skeptik said:
In other countries, buyers have the option of taking Apple's own extended warranty at extra cost. Sadly this is not available in SA. It's a shame because Apple products have a fairly high defect rate.

As far as I know (correct me if I'm mistaken) you are only entitled to a 1-year warranty on SA goods.
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And yet they were recently rated as having highest scores for laptops and desktops in PC Worlds 19th Annual Reader Satisfaction Survey - especially notable was their reference to Apple's score on units needing repair as being "..... nothing less than astonishing."

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,2006497,00.asp
Look no further than Apple, the leader of the pack, whose overall score holds steady at 9.1. Last year, Apple's score on units needing repair was an impressive 11 percent—well below that of any other company in the survey. But according to readers, the company has managed to cut repair rates even further over the past 12 months. This year, Apple's score on units needing repair drops to 8 percent. Among first-year systems, it's only 5 percent. That's nothing less than astonishing.
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I think even Adam and Jamie would agree... Myth totally busted.:D
 
Guess what just appeared on my screen :(
 
halicon said:
17 (April) 2003 <-- manufacture date of my PowerBook

sorry Bwana. Suxors.
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I'm not ready for a MBP yet so I'll just have to suffer for a while - I've made a gradient wallpaper that hides the line. :o
 
bwana said:
Guess what just appeared on my screen :(
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Bad luck. Let us know what happens.

re. Apple's fault ratio..
I believe in open information and if Apples have faults, then we need to know before buying. I'm not interested in hiding anything for any reason. Apple tend to do the opposite. For example, the e-Mac had problems and Apple only admitted it after they stopped manufacturing them. What point is a recall if you've long exchanged it for something else??

I read somewhere that the fault rate for Apple was topping 40%. I'll need to track this down because it was in a magazine.
 
Skeptik said:
Bad luck. Let us know what happens.

re. Apple's fault ratio..
I believe in open information and if Apples have faults, then we need to know before buying. I'm not interested in hiding anything for any reason. Apple tend to do the opposite. For example, the e-Mac had problems and Apple only admitted it after they stopped manufacturing them. What point is a recall if you've long exchanged it for something else??

I read somewhere that the fault rate for Apple was topping 40%. I'll need to track this down because it was in a magazine.
Click to expand...

This is one of the myths that they apparently 'bust' on the apple website. That would really be quite a shocking stat if you can find the article. Would make one seriously think twice about buying Mac again...

I wonder if it is only the older macs or also the new range( MacBook, MacBook Pro etc)?
 
Skeptik said:
I read somewhere that the fault rate for Apple was topping 40%. I'll need to track this down because it was in a magazine.
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I'd love to read it because I'm curious as to how a company could [-]survive[/-] thrive (after all they sold well over a 1.5 million macs and over 21 million iPods) in the quarter ending December 06) with a fault rate of 40%.

Anyhow - resigned myself to getting the 15" 2.33ghz macbook pro.
 
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