Sigh... the aluminum Powerbooks dent easily

my wife carried hers around in a bag for over 8 months now. not a nick on it. sorry, but those suckers are not "easy" to ding.

sure you can do it, but it's gotta either be back luck or effort.

Leo Laporte from TechTV showed his 12" Powerbook on The Screen Savers with a nice dent in one of the corners.

He said he dropped in inside a padded bag and it still made the dent, so yes it certainly does seem that the AL Powerbooks are easily dented.

You must be talking about a Ti. The new Al's dent very easily!

maybe it's time for the job of! Ding King! You know, those things that remove dings on cars

Aluminum does dent easily so does titanium. If you ever look at Range Rover the sheet metal usually has waves all over it. Aluminum is strong but soft but most of all it is light. But all that is a good thing aluminum will withstand certain types of forces because it gives.But the trade off is the lighter you go the thinner it gets and the more likely it is to dent (an increase surface area and a pucker) Cast iron rarely dents and is fairly strong. how bout it guys? a feBook! or better yet depleted uranium. Be the first on your block. I am hoping to get by more than a week before I dent mine. I only made it about 2 with the tiBook

I went from a Alu 12", to a 15" Ti, and to me it seems the Alu dents a lot easier than my Ti...

My Ti has taken months of punishment and still looks brand new, the Alu looked worse after only a few weeks...

Although there are a squillion different types of Al alloy, I guess Apple ditched Ti because Ti is extremely expensive, and its manufacturing process is extremely wasteful. Even so, if you have enough of it you can make gucci toys like these:

(The world's deepest diving and fastest production submarine)

Then again, you can also use Ti to make this:

(the Ti panels buckle if you touch them)


So, Apple swapped to Al alloy for its latest PBs. Although John Ive is right in saying its 'extremely durable', that durability is not much use if you do this to your Al alloy machine:
(no-one was serious hurt)

Umm, you drop your powerbook and you expect to be unscathed? I bet if you jump on it, you'll break it, too.

I've had my 12" powerbook since January and I've barely even scratched it. And it's with me 95% of the time.

So, they are easy to dent, and yet they aren't?

Does anyone have a picture of a dent?

I'm hearing so many mixed reports. I don't know whether to baby my new 12" DVI PowerBook, or carry it eveywhere...

al powerbooks are easily dented. laptops are made to be portable and used and used in the field. not babies and cradled and packaged with bubble wrap 24/7.

there comes a point where as beautiful as it may be, the side effects are not worth it. the new 15 inch albook is gorgeous, but i don't like it for the all the quality problems, and the fact that its easily dented. what good is that

i'd love to see photos of these dents. i'm telling you, over half a year there's not a nick, dent or scratch on my wife's PB, and she was bringing it to school every day. (and she didn't baby it at all)

it has always felt a lot tougher to my than my 15" TiBook, so i'm not sure why so many people think they're more fragile/likely to dent.

Denting or cracking...pick one.

Mine's holding up like a champ.

As opposed to the fricking huge crack a plastic pc notebook would have suffered?

u mean when the plastic would bend and return to its original state?

I call bullshit. I've beaten the tar out of my 12" PBG4 and it has no dents and one tiny scratch and that was from a key hitting it hard.

You guys go ahead and argue the relative merits of metal and plastic. I'll be over here trying not to beat the living hell out of my $2000 consumer electronics devices.

i'd love to see photos of these dents.

again, if you have them post them and how you got them.

How is aluminum for flexing, I heard that the TiBooks suffered from the screen flexing a lot. I also am wondering because when I close my AlBook I somtimes without thinking about it push on it from the center of the lid and that makes LCD funkiness I'm sure you all have experienced. Is that really bad for it, possibly long term causing white spots, dead/stuck pixels? Or am I just paranoid and it doesn't do a damn thing besides freak me out?


I am working on not doing this but it is a new concept to have to be more careful with a computer then my old days of being able to punch, kick or use as a seat.

I dropped a hole puncher on my 1.25 15 the first day I got it and put a half centremetre gash on the corner of the lid.
Ahh well...

Sorry to hear 666

ethar some douche bag didn't yield to me on the interstate, that is not my fault. My point is that when my PoweBook flew forward in the car and smashed into the bump in the middle which isn't padded it was fine and not even any marks (it hit the backside, where the hinge is.)

Also another time in the car I had to brake suddenly and it fell. Fine. The only thing that could hurt it would be my sister's friends. They break every CD they own after a period of time.

Some scratches and marks on the PB look permanent but wipe off with a wet cloth.

As I mentioned earlier in this thread, Leo Laporte of TechTV actually showed his 12" Powerbook with the corner dent on the air.
He mentioned the he dropped the Powerbook but it was inside a padded case when he dropped it.

He didn't think anything happened to it so he was very surprised when he took it out and saw tis big dent in one of the corners.

I just have to chime in here with my expience.

I owned a 400 mhz TiBook, and recently replaced it with a 1ghz AlBook SuperDrive.

My TiBook looked great for about two months. After that, the nightmare began. Paint started peeling off the hinge, dings started to appear, scratches began to mar the cover and the bottom. Then the extremely thin strip of titanium around the optical drive snapped in the middle. Then the whole bottom plate began to warp and deform, causing a gap around the entire base. Then the screws began to unscrew themselves. THEN the real damage began -- the screen.

This was the part that was simply unnaceptable. The entire length of the screen where the beginning of the keyboard (the row with the spacebar) was "pitted" with holes caused by the keys. They were actually holes -- like someone had taken a rather thick needle and punctured the screen several hundred times. And then rubbed dirt in. This would not clean up at all, and the screen always had a dull dark grungy line across the entire length of the screen where it was permanently damaged by the keyboard.

At this point, you are probably asking yourself, "What the heck did this guy do to his TiBook, use it as a football?" to which I will answer honestly, no. I carried it in a padded backpack from one location to another, always gently setting the backpack down and always treating my precious cargo with as much care as possible.

I came to the conclusion that the TiBook is simply not to be used as a portable. It is a gorgeous looking machine with absolutely NO durability at all. I literally could not wait to get rid of it, and felt the whole time rather betrayed by Apple -- the damage that machine incurred (especially the permanently ruined screen) just made me sick -- especially as I did not abuse the unit at all.

This is all by way of saying: I think I know what I'm talking about when I compare the fit, finish and durability of the Titanium PowerBook to the new AlBook 12.1". It is, simply, night and day. Anyway that says the AlBooks can dent more easily than the TiBook is simply out of their mind. Titanium is a JOKE. A filmsy, easily scratched, easily dented material. My AlBook feels like a tank by comparison. I don't doubt that it's possible to dent an AlBook -- but I think the accounts here may be slighly exaggerated -- and of course, I would be bitter too if I had dropped or dented my new baby.

Of course I've lived with my AlBook for a comparitively short time. I'll be more than happy to eat my words if my results prove contrary to my expecations and experience so far. But I can say, it would be almost impossible to design a notebook that is more easily damaged than my old 400mgz Titanium PowerBook.

I could post pics of retarded computers for days......
The crushed corner thing is pretty common, nothing to really worry about, but you have to watch out for stuff like this... if that had been the other side of the AlBook, that would've been one rurnt LCD.
("rurnt" is southern for "ruined")

-Tjay

[edit by Brad: I fixed your image links]

By the way, all of this damage was made possible by our good friends at FedEx. Who then denied our claim even though our box for the AlBook had been punctured.

cough...bullshit...cough

I have a titanium. Rock solid. Paint is peeling, above the DVD drive which is a widespread problem. everything else you stated is just um........ odd. doesn't happen to others.

and i have no scratches on my ti, no dents, no anything, except the paint peeling problem. and i have used my powerbook the way it was meant to be used....AS A PORTABLE....and i have dropped it, and it has banged into things.......and it has never dented.....i lean on it, put pressure on it, everything.......still rock solid.

aluminum books......just look at the other thread, they are a quality nightmare....hell, the ones they had in the store looked warped.

i'm with applenut. scottylad's post reeks suspiciously of lies.

if you ACTUALLY had that many problems, scottlad, did it ever cross your mind that you MIGHT have gotten one of those rare lemons? okay, let's assume you did get a lemon. why didn't you think to contact Apple and use your one-year warrantee to fix what was broken? hell, in some bad cases, Apple will even send you back a whole brand *new* machine to replace the old one.

bullshit, troll. take your pick.

I don't buy it. Everyday my PB12 slips into a padded sleeve in my bag along with a spiral bound, some books, pens, papers, my lunch (when I remember to pack it) and the rest of the stuff that I have to have with me during the day. It gets tossed around a fair bit. I've even had the bag slip and fall twice, once the book slipped out when the bag was open, and made a pretty loud thud on the floor. It was still in the sleeve, I thought I was buggered for sure, no damage.

The only blemish is a thin, fingernail length scratch on the bottom of the machine. I'd say that it's more durable than any plastic notebook I've ever used. Plastic would have cracked under the same circumstances, not bent and bent back.

my Ti has been carried back and forth to work every day for almost two years now. not a mark on it. some paint peeling, and that's it. i've dropped it, i've put stuff on it, i've done all sorts of crap to it by accident that i shouldn't have and it's just fine.

tjay posted the only pic so far, and that i can believe. the box it was shipped in was punctured. in that case i can believe the laptop got damaged.

however, i own both an aluminum and Ti PB, and w/o question in my mind the Al is tougher.

applenut, the "cough ...bullshit ... cough" act is really cute, have you considered hosting a late night comedy show? you must have gotten that line straight from the Troll dictionary. classic.

sorry if my comment threatened your perception of your TiBook. Everything I write here is from my own experience. I'm happy you've had a better one, but that doesn't give you the right to suggest anyone with a contrary view is a troll, as much you might feel that raises your status as an "apple insider". Well as far as I'm concerned, you've come full circle from insider to troll.

Edit: Never mind...

<Plug for the iBook>That explains why plastic cases are better for notebooks.</Plug>