Dead iBook Survey

Mac users have it better than the rest of the industry, apparently.

<a href=" http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story.asp?guid=%7B613D2CD4%2D57E7%2D495F%2D87BD%2D 9068D0ECA1D4%7D&siteid=mktw" target="_blank">Faulty PCs still widespread, hindering tech advances</a>

Still cool here with the 700MHz 12" I purchased last June.

we bought 5, 0 dead.

Six months ago I sent my iBook 500 combo drive back to Apple just before the warranty expired to replace the combo drive which was flaky and not mounting media. I told them at the time that there seemed to be a lot of people having problems with the combo drive manufactured by Toshiba (which I had) and that I would prefer it if they replaced the drive with a Sony (which seemed to be fine according to reports). They told me that they would replace ti with whatever was sent in and so of course I was given a new Toshiba Combo drive.

Now, 6 months later the Combo drive is dead again and not mounting any media!!! :mad: And it looks like they only offer a 3 month warranty on repaired hardware! <img src="graemlins/oyvey.gif" border="0" alt="[oyvey]" />

So my iBook isn't "Dead" but if something does happen to it it is almost as good as without the ability to reinstall the system software or boot from diagnostic CDs.

12" 800 combo. Everythings fine.

Mine died last September, backlight failure. And just out of warranty (bought mid August 2001), no AppleCare :) Took it for repairs, diagnose: display module faulty. The new module + labor would have been EUR 1066 so I decided to take it back as it was. (1 Euro = around 1 USD).

In December I opened the machine and noticed one of the backlight cables had been worn out. Since I could not get hold of a new cable set (not too many of those around here in Finland) I soldered another cable in parallel to the faulty one. The machine has been working fine ever since. I fear that it'll break again though.. To me it looks like the hinge design will wear out the cable eventually.

Some pics and info on my remedy here: <a href="http://www.onda-media.com/jani/ibook/" target="_blank">http://www.onda-media.com/jani/ibook/</a>

--
Zeroel

P.s. First post, not a virgin anymore :)

[ 03-17-2003: Message edited by: zeroel ]</p>

Originally posted by FrostyMMB
People find comfort knowing that they aren't the only ones with a computer defect. I however find comfort knowing that it rarely happens...

I'm just curious how rare it is. Most computer problems are fairly idiosyncratic, and happen more often in older computers - the intersection of random chance and MTBF. This one is odd, because it presents with very consistent symptoms, and seems to happen exclusively in *new* computers. Obviously only Apple has info on the failure rate, but there have been a steady trickle of cases on Apple's boards. Here at AI we have a fairly well-definied Mac community, and it might be possible to make some half-assed estimate of the frequency.

At the low end, 3 of us (crobin, Fellowship, Towel) have reported this problem, out of 7000+ AI members. If they all own iBooks, that's 0.05%.

So far, there's 15 iBooks reported bought and used by AI'ers (including jesperas's gf and alcimedes's 5). 3/15 = way more than reality.

If the truth is, for a half-assed guess, in the 0.5-2.0% range, then, consistent with what's been reported, most people would never experience the problem, and even your average 50-iBook lab probably wouldn't (.99^50 = 0.61). A handful of unlucky souls would get bit twice. But for a single component (NOT the computer as a whole) to have that kind of failure rate *would* be remarkable.

Originally posted by Towel
If the truth is, for a half-assed guess, in the 0.5-2.0% range, then, consistent with what's been reported, most people would never experience the problem, and even your average 50-iBook lab probably wouldn't (.99^50 = 0.61). A handful of unlucky souls would get bit twice. But for a single component (NOT the computer as a whole) to have that kind of failure rate *would* be remarkable.
If it was in the 0.5% range, that works out to be 500 PPM (parts per million), which would be unacceptable in my industry (auto).

For some reason, I would expect a computer to be more reliable than a car. Quick—let's make Car/Computer analogies about this!

I have had my 12" ibook 800 for two months and no problems yet.:)

Got mine July '02 - logic board screwed up in September.

A friend got an iBook 2 weeks ago in Switzerland.. and he supposedly has the same problem - his iBook is now being fixed right now.

Hi,
I've had 6 iBooks die of various causes of 10 I have bought (for the company) in the past eighteen months...
I'm a bit disgusted at the shocking failure rate.
Most have either had USB or FireWire die on the board or the screen issue.

I think I'd rather have bought 5300's at least I could have made toast over the flaming batteries...

So my iBook isn't "Dead" but if something does happen to it it is almost as good as without the ability to reinstall the system software or boot from diagnostic CDs.

If you have access to another recent Mac, can you reinstall the OS by using Firewire target disk mode? (Holding down T on startup makes the iBook act like a Firewire hard drive).

Spotcatbug: dead battery cells? I'd still get it checked out while the iBook is in warranty.

My iBook 500 needed to have its trackpad replaced just before the one-year warranty was up, but it's given sterling service before and since.

The iBook is a very mature design, we don't see many bad iBooks, and most of the ones that go bad have a problem seem to have a bad cable going from the motherboard to the display.

We have however seen problems with the 12" Powerbook, some of them come seriously warped right out of the box. Some are so badly warped I can't figure out how the hell they were assembled in the first place

One day I went to pull my iBook out of my computer bag but found that it was pretty hot inside; apparently it never fully went to sleep before I had put it in there last. I thought I was lucky that nothing had fried when I turned it on and all seemed fine. Unfortunely, it wasn't as I discovered a couple hours later.The screen started acting strangely, then I started having kernel panic after kernel panic (even durring startup). I was able to back-up all of my data to my PowerMac using FireWire Target Disk Mode, fortunately, since it eventualy came to a point where it wouldn't start-up at all.

I took it to my local CompUSA, hoping they could get it fixed for me, but they wanted $300 just to ship it off even though I was still under warrenty. So I just walked-out, knowing that I could get it fixed for free by taking it to an AppleStore located two hours away in Dallas. I didn't need it fixed immediately, so I decided I'd just wait until the next time I needed to travel to Dallas to get it fixed.

A month or so later, I went to Dallas to attend the grand opening of the Knox St. AppleStore and the helpful staff there checked-out my iBook. It didn't take much to get them to have my iBook sent-off to be fixed, as, by then, the iBook wouldn't even turn-on at all! I got my iBook back in less than a week in some expensive-looking packing material, and they even replaced one of the feet that had come off and had been lost (despite being told that they wouldn't replace it).

At the time, I had just thought my iBook, for some reason, didn't turn itself off and had overheated, but, after hearing about these motherboard problems other iBook users have been experiencing, I'm not so sure anymore.

I bought my iBook on August '02 and it died near the beginning of December.

iBook600
Eleven months in the dreaded flakey backlight problem started. Sent it in. (Very nice phone people by the way).

- 1st time came back with drive wiped, no fixes
- 2nd time came back with replaced reed switch. Worked fine for almost 24 hours.
- 3rd time came back with new MB and a new 3 month warrenty. Phew!

Four months later (and no warrenty left) it started again. Backlight randomly fades, blacks, lights, flickers etc. Bad reed switch for sure. Since I don't feel like sinking ~$400 at the moment (out of work) I'm just living with it and adding new words to my vocabulary. :(

My 500MHz iBook (sold last year) is still going strong, as is a similar model we bought for the office; no problems with either after almost two years.

FWIW, my campus computer store recommends iBooks or a Dell laptop for students. The store manager told me last year that ALL the Dells they sold to incoming students came back for repair at least once. They do require students to purchase AppleCare for the iBooks because they can't be serviced on campus.

six month old ibook, runs like a dream.
Has yet to crash......

My iBook here is gonna be 3 years old this coming Xmas and the only problem its had is that 1 CD sometimes causes me to have an I/O error that a Restart fixes. Otherwise I haven't had to send this baby in for repairs. its running like a dream. ^_^ I love it. It's my baby. ^__^__^

Jag has really sped me up. 10.1 was too sluggish. I rarely even boot into OS 9 anymore... I may dedicate that as my music/audio OS... but not before I reinstall it so I have no 3rd party conflicts.

I'd be really pissed if anything serious went wrong with it.

its a 12" 600 MHz model, with the factory installed 384 MB of RAM from 2001.

Cheers everyone!