Slashdot Mirror
12" PowerBook Wobble?
RedWingsSuck asks: "I recently purchased a 12" PowerBook from ADC. I absolutely love it, but I have noticed an interesting little issue. As it warms up, other users have said the case gets as hot as 120 degree F, it develops a wobble on a flat surface, like a table or something. As it gets warmer, the wobble gets worse. When I first noticed it, I thought I had lost a rubber peg from the bottom, but apparently my problem is not that simple. While on spring break, in San Diego, I went to the Apple Store there, and I was told that a few other people have had this problem, and that if I had purchased the PowerBook from there, they would have replaced it with a new one. Then I called Apple Care, and they told me that they were just informed of this problem. Has anybody else had this problem, if so, what did Apple say about it?"
I am ticked off about Apple's seeming lack of desire to resolve these issues. As a early adopter of the first 15" TiBook model (first month it was released) I am really annoyed they still haven't bothered to fix this simple and glaring issue.
:(
:( . Most of the Viao's have been well built and durable (with rare exception, the 505 was quite vunerable as it was so thin), and all the Armada's are built (and look like ;) Russian tanks. I also think there were a more issues with PowerBooks than with iBooks, so this rings true for me.
They are glued on with something that has all the bonding power of a Pritt Stick. Also, I found the feet were too tiny to be much use for heat disippation in any case - it makes the Powerbook look thinner, but I added my own reasonably sized feet (with Superglue) and it made the system run *much* cooler.
My PowerBook ultimately developed a number of cracks and fell apart on me (it has now been taken apart and modded to be housed in a rack mountable Cisco 2500 chassis as a result).
One of the cracks the poor design developed put strain on the screen, which now has 3 dead pixels. Oh, and the hard drive went on my system in the first 3 months AND the keyboard was badly designed and fell apart AND the DVD firmware was broken which caused the drive to utterly destroy two of my DVD's (at first I thought it was a random fluke until a patched was released). And let's not talk about the paint (but that didn't bother me too much).
They have fixed a lot of these issues, and I don't mind them as an 'early adopter', and I should also add that Apple support is *very* good, despite this I have decided to abandon Apple as a vendor for the time being. I considered getting a 12" or 17" Powerbook as a replacement, but *knew* there would be a whole glut of new issues. Apple had loads of problems like this with the otherwise wonderful Cube too, and many such issues always seem to drag on and never be fully resolved by Apple...
I wish they would learn. Many of the systems look very pretty, but aren't very durable.
As it is, I now have a reasonably loaded dual-cpu Sun Ultra 60 based Sun Ray network at home (just waiting for another Sun Ray to arrive this week as it happens) I'm very happy with Gnome 2 and the Sun Hardware, it may run even less games than Mac OS X, but that's why I have an XBox and GameCube.
Anyway...
I think my next laptop with either be a Sony (despite their truly - notoriously - awful customer support, their portable systems are also attractive yet much more durable - the NR70 being amazing for all the crap I put it through) or - if it is sufficiently supported in Linux - a Compaq Tablet. I'd rather have a Compaq Tablet, but I don't want to go through all the pain of running Microsoft Windows.
I can't see it being an Apple again unless I'm able to trawl the web without being flooded by users with problems:
Compare Google searches for the following terms (remove quotes):
'viao problem' (1,990 hits) (Sony)
'armada problem' (61,200 hits) (Compaq)
'powerbook problem' (110,000 hits) (Apple)
'ibook problem' (70,200 hits) (Apple)
I just tried that just now on a random hunch (never done it before). Scary, and it didn't surprise me
I'd definitely say buyer beware - and advise people to research problems first online (and maybe wait until the vendor [Apple] gives firm fixes for the most serious issues). I can live with rubbish feet and poor quality glue, bad case design in a several-thousand-dollar-laptop is a lot more serious though.