Apple Powerbooks and iBooks reliability

A

agusgriego

Partially Insane
I bought a 15" 1.5Ghz AluBook with a 5400 rpm 80 GB HD in June.
I used it mostly as a desktop and leaving it turned on for 2-3 days periods.

The thing is in November (only 4 months later) my HD's S.M.A.R.T. status reported an impending failure and I found out my Bluetooth module also had stopped working.

I sent it to apple (which cost me a LOT of money because I live in Argentina and had to send it to USA) and they replaced both the Bluetooth module and the HD.

Now, out of 10 people I know that have an Apple portable, seven of them have had issues with logic boards, screens, batteries not lasting what they should, and I've seen that the Bluetooth problem I had is also very common.

Should I sell this powerbook and get a G5 instead or hope there aren't any more problems with it?

What are your experiences with the latest Apple portables?
 
I have owned only this one, a 1GHz 15" Titanium powerbook for about 1.5 years now, and have never had one problem with it. I was also under the impression that Apple paid for the shipping if you need to send it to them while it is still under warranty (maybe this is just in the US).

I have 5 other friends with Powerbooks, and none of us have ever had any problem with them.
 
i'm currently using an AluBook 15" 1.5GHz (the latest released).

i never had such problem with Bluetooth or HD error for now. I just bought it last September. i also had no problem with dead pixel as previously reported by other AluBook owners.
 
Hi...I'm in Sydney, Australia and have a 12" powerbook G4 1.33 Ghz presumably assembled in Singapore. It's only about 6 weeks old but so far no problems. Actually I had to return the first one because it had a "stuck" pixel. After some hassles, they swapped it for me but I had to make a lot of noise. This powerbook is excellent...really love using it and so far so good!

S
 
I read somewhere the following. For what it's worth. It might apply to you.

Some mac portables (I think powerbooks) were known to apple to have some weakness. These where, the article continued, mainly sold in latin america.

Furthermore, Apple had also, either discontinued or, had problems with the production line of the stated mac motherboard.

This meant that apple had a problem when customers submitted their mac for repairs as no replacement was availble. Apple went for the easy solution, they replaced the faulty motherboard with a better one (higher speed).

Have you noticed if the nominal speed of your repaired mac is better than the one that you send in for repairs?
 
I know of 6 friends who I convinced to buy a powerbook. None of them ever had a problem with the powerbooks (from 12-17'' model). They are very happy with their books and keep repeating how much more reliable Apple is when compared to other vendors.. My tibook never had any problems but a battery replacement. I am using it for almost 2 years by now and 14hours every day.
 
i have a question regarding the AluBook's batery. Someone told me that, the batery will be charged until 100% and change the current to direct into the AluBook without charging the batery.

Is this true? Cause i'm using my AluBook at work and at home. Basically it kept charged while i was at work. Reason is because the batery only last like 2-3 hours based on my usage.

-azrad
 
You'll never get the Apple state 5 hour battery life. Well, I nearly did once, by turning off Airport, Bluetooth, setting CPU speed to minimum, setting monitor brightness to minimum and doing only word processing.

What I do is I use my batter at least once a week (NOT recalibrate it), so that I don't get any bad side effects of having a Lithium Ion battery charged for too long. If you want to know how much capacity your battery has, do the following in the terminal.
ioreg -l | grep Battery
Click to expand...

A capacity of above 4000 is good.
 
I have the 15" PB 800 dvi model. It is my main computer since I purchased it. It is on for several hours a day, and if not it is asleep. I have not had one problem with the computer at all. This model is getting to be a couple of years old. I had a PowerBook G3 Prismo, and after three years, it died. The processor, logic board and HD went at the same time, and that was the end of the computer.
Conversely, my friend lives in the Philippines, he has had significant more trouble with his laptops. In theory, he and others are concerned it is the salt water air :confused:. Perhaps it is. Moreover, he is a heavy smoker in front of his computer. Just ideas :D
 
actually this kind of battery test is not very reliable. How long is the duration? And do you have a 12'' ibook? They have a smaller battery..
 
Actually, it's pretty reliable. The size that it quotes is in mAh. The Powerbooks have (i think a 4400 mah) battery while the iBooks have a 4000 mAh battery. The capacity that ioreg reports corresponds to the current capacity of the battery.

When you're running on battery power, the "current" field that is returned by ioreg tells you the amount of current left in the battery. Your machine will shut down once that reaches 0. It's pretty reliable.

If you're original battery was rated at 4000 mAh, getting 3600 would mean you've got 90% the original capacity. Not bad.
 
It can also track and document the capacity over time, so you can see how fast (or slow) the battery loses capacity.


* i did not claim ioreg was unreliable,
Zammy-Sam did. :)
 
Yeye, now you blame it on me.. tc tc tc :)
I remember we had a thread on 'ioreg' and some ppl had good points in calling it not so reliable. Didn't find it yet, but maybe someone else knows?
 
I have a few laptops here at work that I take care of.
3 Black PB's -- never a problem.
2 12" PB's -- one spent 6.5 weeks in the shop with logic board and video issues the other spent 1.5 weeks in the shop with logic board issues.
1 15" Ti500 PB -- never a problem.

Of all the Macs I've used (or been in charge of fixing) the newer PB's have the most problems followed closely by the Quicksilvers.
 
I have had decent luck with my powerbooks. I had a problem with my first wallstreet that burned up the second day I had it. It was replaced with another that did the same thing. It was repaired and I have never had a problem with up till this day.

I have had a 17 in powerbook since they were released. I use it everyday and except for the battery starting not to hold charge as long. No problems.

calliex
 
No, problems to report here in some dozens of a/t/iBooks that I've sold to customers other than one of them with a 12" aBook/combo drive which died after almost a year...

What I sold, was anything above G3/700MHz iBooks. So, there! :D
 
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