Dead iBook Survey

Posted:
in Current Mac Hardware edited January 2014
I'm wondering what proportion of AI iBook owners have been hit by the iBook "Screen Goes Crazy and iBook Dies" motherboard problem. I would guess that qualifying iBooks would be any iBook bought since the last major motherboard revision in Spring '02.



1. (me): Yes, bought 8/02, died at six months of age (2/02).
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Comments

  • Reply 1 of 38
    0. Mine's okay.



    * runs and hides *
  • Reply 2 of 38
    eugeneeugene Posts: 8,254member
    Mac users have it better than the rest of the industry, apparently.



    <a href="http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story.asp?guid={613D2CD4-57E7-495F-87BD- 9068D0ECA1D4%7D&siteid=mktw" target="_blank">Faulty PCs still widespread, hindering tech advances</a>
  • Reply 3 of 38
    jesperasjesperas Posts: 524member
    GF's is fine. (600mhz model)
  • Reply 4 of 38
    banchobancho Posts: 1,517member
    Still cool here with the 700MHz 12" I purchased last June.
  • Reply 5 of 38
    pevepeve Posts: 518member
    funny. if this is true - my lab should be full of dead ibooks.



    funny - it isn't.
  • Reply 6 of 38
    alcimedesalcimedes Posts: 5,486member
    we bought 5, 0 dead.
  • Reply 7 of 38
    frostymmbfrostymmb Posts: 131member
    People find comfort knowing that they aren't the only ones with a computer defect. I however find comfort knowing that it rarely happens and when it does, you've still got a warranty and maybe even AppleCare. Rather than making two threads about the same dead iBook, why not just get it serviced since it is still under warranty. It won't be too much trouble and you might not even have to pay shipping. Fortunately, nobody else has (responded with) this problem with their iBook. That's good news to me.
  • Reply 8 of 38
    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!!! 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.
  • Reply 9 of 38
    paulpaul Posts: 5,278member
    [quote]Originally posted by Towel:

    <strong>1. (me): Yes, bought 8/02, died at six months of age (2/02).</strong><hr></blockquote>



    haven't heard of ANY on campus... and I see quite a bit of iBooks on campus...



    (most bought 8/02, 12" and 14"ers)
  • Reply 10 of 38
    12" 800 combo. Everythings fine.
  • Reply 11 of 38
    crobincrobin Posts: 9member
    I too have had a similar problem. Apple did cover it under warranty, though it took a long time and a lot of haggeling. (I broke my ethernet connector so they were not going to cover this problem). There is a thread on ars with a few people having the same problem. It appears to be a rare one, on ars as well there are very few seeing this. I should have mine back today so I'll see what they have done. I hope its a new logic board, a free fix for the ethernet would be nice ($700 to fix it otherwise
  • Reply 12 of 38
    zeroelzeroel Posts: 2member
    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>
  • Reply 13 of 38
    mcqmcq Posts: 1,543member
    My 12" 800 MHz iBook is running just fine.
  • Reply 14 of 38
    toweltowel Posts: 1,479member
    Quote:

    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.
  • Reply 15 of 38
    serranoserrano Posts: 1,806member
    No problems here. BTW I wan't my image sig back!
  • Reply 16 of 38
    Quote:

    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!
  • Reply 17 of 38
    escherescher Posts: 1,811member
    My iBook/500 (May 2001) just returned from its second "vacation" in Texas. First trip was to fix an issue where the backlight would flake out when I opened the screen beyond 80 degrees. Second trip was to fix an issue where AirPort signal would be cut completely if I opened the screen beyond vertical.



    Woulda, shoulda, coulda... gotten AppleCare!



    Escher
  • Reply 18 of 38
    I have had my 12" ibook 800 for two months and no problems yet.
  • Reply 19 of 38
    zapchudzapchud Posts: 844member
    My friends 2 month old 800Mhz iBook has a problem like the one Escher described, where the LCD backlighting suicides when the screen is opened more than 95,100°.... and another friends iBook seems to have died today, but if that's the OS-installation or a real hardware problem is unknown yet.



    My mother's iBook 500 is fine still
  • Reply 20 of 38
    giaguaragiaguara Posts: 2,724member
    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.
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