PB 15" 1.5Ghz Logic Board and Ambient Light Sensor failure ?
Please tell me this is just a bad dream ...
http://www.spymac.com/forums/showthr...threadid=78063
Yesterday 06:12 PM | REPORT
Powerbook 15'' 1.5Ghz notice. READ!
DO NOT, I repeat DO NOT buy the 1.5ghz 15.2'' Powerbook. I bought one and the Ambient Light Sensor broke the day I got it, then today the Logic Board went bad. I called Apple (Applecare number) and they said they were getting tons of calls with Logic Board and Ambient Light Senor complaints. I plan on going to my local Apple Tech thursday (Only day I can get off) to have my Powerbook returned to Apple, and have my credit card refunded. In a month or two I will purchase a new Powerbook, assuming they have solved the Logic Board and Ambient Light Sensor problem.
For those of you who do not believe me just call Apple and ask to talk to the Powerbook Product Specialists on the help line. I got it all from them.
http://www.spymac.com/forums/showthr...threadid=78063
Yesterday 06:12 PM | REPORT
Powerbook 15'' 1.5Ghz notice. READ!
DO NOT, I repeat DO NOT buy the 1.5ghz 15.2'' Powerbook. I bought one and the Ambient Light Sensor broke the day I got it, then today the Logic Board went bad. I called Apple (Applecare number) and they said they were getting tons of calls with Logic Board and Ambient Light Senor complaints. I plan on going to my local Apple Tech thursday (Only day I can get off) to have my Powerbook returned to Apple, and have my credit card refunded. In a month or two I will purchase a new Powerbook, assuming they have solved the Logic Board and Ambient Light Sensor problem.
For those of you who do not believe me just call Apple and ask to talk to the Powerbook Product Specialists on the help line. I got it all from them.
Comments
logic boards failing on iBooks
cracks in the iBook cases
loose hinges on the powerbooks and iBooks
White spots on the 15" alu displays
peeling keys on the iBooks and titaniums
Squished track pad Buttons on the titanium
Easily breakable power supply input
all these in significant numbers.
Originally posted by Messiahtosh
Not another quality control issue! This would be heartbreaking, I just spent so much cash on my PowerBook.
So far we have one single source with nothing more than rumor status. Escept for the post cited here, there are no other source as of now. All just speculation so far, no hard facts.
Funnily enough people are more than willing to bealive any old shite as long as it's negative!
Originally posted by Wrong Robot
Has anyone noticed that in the past year apple has had more and more quality control issues with various products? particularly the notebooks?
logic boards failing on iBooks
cracks in the iBook cases
loose hinges on the powerbooks and iBooks
White spots on the 15" alu displays
peeling keys on the iBooks and titaniums
Squished track pad Buttons on the titanium
Easily breakable power supply input
all these in significant numbers.
It's called charging a premium price, keeping a near 30% margin and then sending all the machines to be built by the same people Dell Compaq and others use in Taiwan.
You use the same people, you get the same result. People don't seem to mind when it is a $500 POS. But obviously everybody minds when it is a Mac and an expensive one at that.
Nick
Also do you think that because i'm getting built to order that they might put it through another quality inspection before they ship? Anyone have any experience?
Thanks.
Also anyone with a 17" 1.33 or 1GHZ can you let me know if your DVI port had screws mising on the side? or is that neccisary? I mean either side of the port there are two screw holes and i noticed that they were missing on my PB, and the PB's in the apple store. Can anyone let me know what the deal is. Maybe send a photo of what yours looks like close up.
Thanks Again
Originally posted by locopano
Hey i have ordered a 17" PB 1.5GHZ BTO w/5400rpm & 128MB VRAM. I was wondering if you have heard of any problems with the new 17" models?
Also do you think that because i'm getting built to order that they might put it through another quality inspection before they ship? Anyone have any experience?
I got my alu15" (1.25ghz) in the middle of the "white spots" ordeal, I committed to get it when I did partly because I got a BTO(no superdrive) When it arrived *all* the notorious problems(latch, keys peeling, white spots, flimsy..etc) weren't there, my powerbook was, and still is in perfect condition(except for a few scratches)
So, I'd say that the BTO model probably gets at least a little more attention than a standard model, but probably not much more.
Pismo:
My Pismo is one killer laptop, but just under a year (by 1 week!) after I got it the sound out port broke on the back. Thank you apple warrantee, but I realized a design flaw. The flap that covers the ports on the back can put pressure on my headphone plug, and the port than supports much of the weight of the laptop. I mad a note of this and bought a special adapter that prevents this from happening. That was 3 years ago and it still works great.
Beige G3:
Inside the G4 behind the floppy drive is the main hard drive. All the cables are threaded around and blocks airflow. There is a eddy behind the drive bays that make it difficult to get airflow over the main hard drive. After my second drive crashed, I added a cheap fan to help airflow and the G3 seems to work fine now.
Dual G5:
Well, well, well. Needless to say there was that burning-up-hard-drive issue.
Unfortunately ALL man made products have some percentage of defects - my old stat teacher was very good at explaining that: how many standard deviations do you want to pay for in order to improve quality? After a few you are in the 98-99% range and then each additional production expense just keeps getting closer to 100% - but never reaches it.
Owning both a Dell desktop (and previous laptops) and (as of yesterday) 2 15" PBs I can tell you that there is one hell of a difference. Engineering is one area, as is the time Apple actually invests in designing their computers. As a user, however, the main difference you will see when you have a problem is the quality of customer support. With Apple you get someone who works for Apple and actually cares about helping you get the problem resolved.
With Dell you get someone in India who is reading from a script book and has no idea how to solve your problem - except to tell you to do a full reinstall. I made one call to Dell's customer support, spent half an hour trying to get help and hung up without my problem solved. The most frustrating part is that Dell used to have a fantastic customer support before they decided to save money by shipping it to India.
Now that I've moved the laptop to a PB (15" 667 2 years ago and a new 15" 1.5) I'm ready to replace the old home Dell 450 with the next generation iMac and the office Dell with a PM G5 as soon as VPC is available. At least with Apple you get what you pay for!
Originally posted by kenaustus
Unfortunately ALL man made products have some percentage of defects
True, but it feels like that percentage is increasing... BIG TIME!. I'm not trying to say Apple is lazy or anything, but they really need to do more detailed/quantity of beta testing. (Apple wanna hire me?
I also own a dell laptop, and that is a, well, good-ish machine. Dell Tech support is great IMO. They came out to my house to fix a hardware problem. Kudos Dell. Then again, they have yet to release a graphics card driver to let me play the latest games. ATI passes the torch to manufacturers to build their own drivers. They won't release anything that can install on my laptop.
then one person bitches which is read by another person who bitches.
end up with a bunch of whiney bitches all stroking each other into a "poor me with my expensive laptop" circle jerk, when in reality it's maybe 1% of all laptop purchases.
to the best of my knowledge, there have been a whopping 2 problems in the last year or so with apple's products. (when i say problems, i mean one that is consistant enough to matter).
the first was the logic board on the iBooks. there's a long story behind that, but basically that one was impossible to know about until after the machines were all built and shipped.
the second is the white spots on the powerbooks, which was a real problem (although purely cosmetic), and a stupid one to have at that. that was publicly acknowledged by apple, and fixed accordingly.
most of the other crap listed here is just that, crap. individual instances of something going wrong, not a design flaw.
things like paint chipping etc. are cosmetic defects, and really have no bearing on how well the machine functions.
Originally posted by locopano
Hey i have ordered a 17" PB 1.5GHZ BTO w/5400rpm & 128MB VRAM. I was wondering if you have heard of any problems with the new 17" models?
Mine arrived a few days ago, and I have noticed the trackpad behaving odd. That is, the mouse pointer intermittently jumps around. My hunch is a software rather than hardware problem, but what do I know.
If that's the only problem I find, I can live with it. However, this is my first Apple so I'm going to be left with a rather bad taste in my mouth if I experience other usability glitches.
-Pace
Anyway, I don't feel concerned in the least now that I have owned multiple Macs and have never experienced ANY issues other than user error.
Originally posted by pace
Mine arrived a few days ago, and I have noticed the trackpad behaving odd. That is, the mouse pointer intermittently jumps around. My hunch is a software rather than hardware problem, but what do I know.
If that's the only problem I find, I can live with it. However, this is my first Apple so I'm going to be left with a rather bad taste in my mouth if I experience other usability glitches.
-Pace
I had, what sounds like this exact problem, happen to me earlier this year on an iBook G4 I bought back in November. In my case it was most definitely a hardware problem that was taken care of without question as soon as I took it into the shop where I bought it. Unfortunately, the problem seems to be appearing anew, though not conistently like it was before (and thus easy to demonstrate).
-Pace
Originally posted by pace
Mine arrived a few days ago, and I have noticed the trackpad behaving odd. That is, the mouse pointer intermittently jumps around. My hunch is a software rather than hardware problem, but what do I know.
If that's the only problem I find, I can live with it. However, this is my first Apple so I'm going to be left with a rather bad taste in my mouth if I experience other usability glitches.
-Pace
Really???? Thats F#@$ED! I cant stand bad service and the fact that bugs are anticipated makes my blood boil. If its just the OS then thats fine. I doubt they will let me EXCHANGE my BTO PB, so i will have to wait if anything goes wrong. Wait for repairs etc, meanwhile my PB is probably getting scratched etc. ALthough the mouse problem i can live with but shouldnt have to! Hopefullyit can be resolved by attaching a 3rd party mouse which i will be doing reguardless.
I hope the aussie batch of PB's arent tainted.
Please let me know what the deal is with the mouse problem when you figure it out.
Thanks Mate....
Last October I purchased a leftover PowerMac G4 (new, not refurb) from Small Dog. 3 days after I received it, smoke came out of the machine and it shut down. Small Dog stopped answering my e-mail after I told them that it was not DOA. It actually worked for a couple of days before it died. So they decided that it's not their problem. I needed to contact Apple.
The only problem is that I am stationed overseas at a U.S. Air Force base in Japan. So I started by contacting Apple Japan. They told me that they can't repair my computer under warranty because it is a U.S. model. And to make it worse, it would cost a lot more than a regular repair because they will have to import all the parts from U.S. even though they already have Japan parts which are identical to the U.S. parts. (Something about different part #'s from country to country.)
As my terrible luck turns out, my father passed away that week. I had to return to the Hawaii to attend my father's funeral and take care of family matters so I carried the PowerMac with me.
Once I arrived, I took it to the nearby Apple Store. I told them that I am staying only for 3 weeks and it needs to be repaired by then. They said that it will be done in 4 days.
4 days later, they told me that it will take a couple more days. No problem, I'm here for another 2 weeks.
2 days later. Still not done.
On the 9th day, I got my computer back. They replaced the CPU & motherboard. When I got home, I found out that there was no sound. I took it right back.
Another week later, it came back with yet another motherboard. But the main fan was making some really loud clattering sound and the hard drive was corrupt. I was warned about the hard drive but the fan noise was too loud. So I took it back yet again. They told me that it would take another few days. I reminded them of the day that I was leaving and they said that it will be no problem.
4 days later. Not done yet. They told me that it will take another week. I reminded them again about the deadline. They said that they will ship it to me (at my cost). I cursed at that genius so loud, the other customers seemed surprised. My computer was fixed that day. I had them thoroughly test out the computer to make sure that there is nothing wrong this time.
Everything is fine ever since except for the fact that "About this Mac" no longer shows a serial number (Probably because of the motherboard swap).
I don't know if I'm an isolated case, but Apple service is anything close to what people says it is.
I don't know if I'm an isolated case, but Apple service is anything close to what people says it is.
yes, it's isolated. apple was ranked the highest in customer satisfaction and turn around time in Consumer Reports recently. they also had the lowest number of defects out of the box.
who knew that with HUNDREDS of THOUSANDS of people buying their machines, some of their shit wouldn't work!!@!@!@
why is everyone wetting their pants hoping to be a victim these days?