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Apple Laptop Reliability Survey
Nikopol writes "The venerable Macintouch site recently released the results and analysis of a survey on Apple laptop reliability." From the article: "Our survey spanned every laptop capable of running Mac OS X, encompassing 41 models sold over seven and a half years. A challenge in ascertaining the reliability of any device is that more time gives them more opportunity to break, so new devices should always look more reliable at first glance. Our survey asked participants when their laptop first needed a repair -- 'first year', 'second or third year', and 'fourth year or later.' These correspond to the duration of Apple's standard one-year warranty, the AppleCare extended warranty program, and any repairs that might happen outside any warranty coverage period. We also asked participants if they purchased AppleCare for their laptop."
I used a PowerBook 140 for about ... oh, I dunno, 12 years. The screen went out in 2003, but other than that the machine runs. Unfortunately, I have no SCSI computers/devices available to pull off the ONE THING I WANT MOST from that PowerBook.
A small little Japanese puzzle game called Katayuri. Does anyone know where to download a copy of this great little game?
Still though, 12 years without a problem is pretty freaking solid. Kudos!
Colleagues and friends have recently had a lot of problems with new IBM portables (by Lenovo), which used to be the standard of reliability. I have been using a Titanium PowerBook for over three years on the desktop and on the road, as my only work computer, without a single problem so far. I wonder how well the upcoming Intel-based Mac will perform in terms of reliability?
I have a dual-USB 800Mhz iBook that is on it's THIRD logic board. It's now out of coverage, so if the board dies again I'm looking at a 500$ repair, basically meaning I have an overpriced disposable computer. Guess I'll buck up for a Powerbook, or just go IBM/Leano Thinkpad, since I'm running Linux I could go either way, next time. Oh, but OT, the battery has been fine, after 3 years it only lasts ~1 hour or so for me.
fak3r.com
I would like here from my fellow /.'ers about this because I'm thinking of getting one.
Oh, please, no Apple fanboy Troll posts. I want real feedback.
Here's my story with Apple. I heard so many great things about the iMac (Flavored ones) and when I got one: I was REALLY disappointed. It kept locking up, had to reboot often, etc.... In all due honesty, I was using a lot of MS software on it - yes, I'm paranoid too about that - i.e. MS writing shit for Mac.
I wonder if they surveyed any of the people affected by this rather substaintial, but as yet unresolved issue on many powerbooks?
The only thing I miss from G3 PowerBooks is the dual drive bays so I could have 2 batteries for long trips. I had some annoying problems with G3 PBs (Pismos and Lombards), including cracked cases and missing/broken keycaps.
Its replacement, a Ti 667/GigE was -seriously- abused. We logged about 300,000 miles of travel. The latch failed twice (but that didn't affect the usability of the PB itself), I replaced 2 bricks (probably due to picking them up by the power cord) and near the end of the 3 year period (and just before AppleCare ran out), it blew a motherboard. I was on travel to Huntington Beach. I drove down to the Newport Beach Apple Store, committed it to Apple about 7:00 PM Thursday, and it was back at my home Tysons Corner VA store by the following Tuesday afternoon. (Try that with a Dell or HP or IBM!). The latch replacements were while-I-wait at a local Apple dealer (he ordered the part and called me when it was in), and the power supplies were direct replacement at Apple Stores (one each in Newport Beach and Tysons Corner.)
Given how hard that machine was used, and comparing it to the varous PC laptops of my co-workers, the Mac was definitely a better choice from a hardware reliability perspective. PCs in particular tended to cluster, some brands/models had real problems. And its Mean Time to Repair was outstanding. My total down-time over 3 years was 2x 3 hours for the latch repair and 3 days for the motherboard. With some people's laptops, it was many trips back to tech support before the machine was fixed or, much more often, replaced.
Your mileage may vary; I'm tying this on an Al PB that replaced the Ti PB. After -27 years- of personal computer ownership, I rate my Ti PB as the all-around best machine I've ever owned, for convenience, utility, weight, fun-to-use, etc. I've had other Macs with less repairs (Mac ci were absolute rocks!), but the Ti PB hit my sweet spot for all around goodness.
dave
Fewest Repairs:
* original (colored) iBooks
Yep, that's my Navi. "Blueberry" original 300MHz iBook. My Aunt Karen initially owned Navi, and the thing literally went around the world with her when she was a travel writer. She passed it off to me last year when she made the questionable "upgrade" to a VAIO. I sent it to the folks at Wegener Media to get a 30GB HD and 512MB SO-DIMM to bring the specs up from the 3.2GB/192MB it originally shipped with. I run Navi on Mac OS X Panther 10.3.9. It's not a speed daemon with that...you can only push a 300MHz G3 so far. But it gets me there.
I have been using Navi at college now for the past semester, and it's been great. Navi has an AirPort card, and using wireless on Mac OS X is a satiny smooth experience when you compare it to the fiddliness of wireless under Linux or under Windows. (Wireless+Windows=security nightmare!)
The original clamshell iBook is built to last. It's made out of that Fisher-Price ABS plastic that the iMac and the "flavored" minitowers are made of. It was designed to take the kind of bumps expected from the K-12 kids it was designed for. Yeah, it's heavy. Yeah, it's got an 800 x 600 screen when 1024 x 768+ is normal. But that's a solid machine. I fully expect it to be still running and still useful in 5 more years. Maybe Apple doesn't make lappies to last now like they did in the past. But the iBook comes from a time that they did.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
Wow.. Placed Katayuri in Google and I received 0 results.. I'm shocked...
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XenoPhage
Technological Musings
I have a 15" powerbook, approximately 20 months old. I am on my *3rd* power cord (with the brick). It just does NOT work well. I've heard the same complaints from friends and others. The connector where it hooks into the notebook is very weak. Even now, on my 3rd connector (about 3 months old) I need to wiggle sometimes, move it around, to get it to work. The first one caught on fire about 11 months after I had it--CAUGHT ON FIRE. The second one last about a year (after I was VERY careful with it, and actually put tape around it to hold it steady. The third one looks like it will have a similar lifespan. I hate hate hate the power connector.
Other than that, I love the powerbook!
Personal experience: I have a 2003 Dell Inspiron laptop and a 2004 12" Powerbook. I used to have a 2002 12" iBook. The Dell had a bad wi-fi card (which was an Intel part) which was replaced free of charge, and that's been my only problem. It's ugly and plastic, but everything works. The PB has a bad modem which freezes the OS when I try to use it, the and the hard drive died after 6 months. I did the HD replacement myself. I didn't try using the modem until after the warranty had expired, and it's kinda hard to replace the modem since it's on the motherboard. The iBook had a bad touch pad, a non functioning latch, and a powersupply failure. I ended up pitching it into a dumpster. I'm going to try a Sony or HP for my next laptop.
Pismo (G3 Firewire) - built like TANKS. TANKS I SAY. Slap a Lombard power brick on them to replace the POS yo-yo (I went through four yoyos in four years) and you're ready for the bomb to drop- the brick is the only part I've ever needed to replace.
Lombard power bricks were recalled because there was a fire risk. Stick with the yoyo or buy a third party adapter.
I've had very good luck with my Pismo, with some exceptions. I had a strange logic board problem in April 2001 that caused the weirdest problems and was difficult for Apple to diagnose (minimizing any window in OS X would crash all apps, playing any mp3 in OS 9 would crash the player app) and they kept sending back my PowerBook still broken, with the hard drive downgraded to OS 9.0 (current at the time was 10.0 and 9.1). Both my DVD drive and battery died just over the 1 year mark, out of warrantee, but I was able to scrounge up replacements from a dead Lombard where I worked. Other than that the machine has been a trooper. I used it for over three years as my primary machine at school and then as a secondary "loft" computer for another year. It is currently running as my home server.
Truer words have not been spoken. I used a Pismo for in-the-field capture of huge digital images from Phaso One cameras. That thing went to the desert, in blistering heat and dust, and up Mt. Kilimanjaro without skipping a beat.
... and then they built the supercollider.
My wife has had a PowerBook G4 now for about a year. I bought it for her in January. Since that time, my three dogs have stomped on it repeatedly as my wife has a habit of leaving the notebook opened up on the floor. The case is a bit dented and doesn't fold properly, and two or three of the keys are missing, and we've had to change the power cord twice, but... given that we are talking about 3 dogs weighing around 70lbs apiece, I'd say its doing pretty good.
Conversely, my wife's friend brought a toshiba satellite notebook to the house, and also made the mistake of leaving it opened on the floor. It took all of about 30 seconds for the dogs to knock all of the keys off of its wimpy keyboard. Consequently, we had to buy her a new one.
Thus, in my mind, Apple's dog resistant keyboard lasts one year, whereas, a PC notebook lasts 30 seconds. Now I'm not saying Steve Jobs has a kennel onsite at Apple to test things like this out, but I wouldn't put it past him either.
This is my sig.
We had at least 20+ iBooks come through our paper in the last 3 or so years and among those there were only two or three that failed for any "mechanical" reason. (Had several fail due to impact damage.) Those that died were related to the logic board recall and Apple fixed them extraordinarily fast.
Keep in mind that these were machines used by photojouranlists and subject to a lot of hard use -- wildfires, Iraq, the Olympics, daily beatings. (One of our guys was blown out of a Humvee by an IED and while he wound up with a mild concussion and broken hand, the iBook was undamaged. )
We've since rotated them out for 15-inch Powerbooks to provide enough CPU/GPU umpf vs large digital files. I only hope these PBs do as well as the the iBooks.
the future is here, it is just not evenly distributed - w. gibson
I picked up my Powerbook G4 550 in the first part of 2001. I cranked up the RAM to 512, added an old style airport card I found on ebay (after Apple quit making them), and picked up an extra power supply after the wires frayed. The only other problem I've had with it is the screen had a loose connector. I take it apart every 6 months or so and re-seat the connector and it works fine for a while. I added a firewire external hard drive (160Gb) to suppliment the internal 18Gb. I also hooked up a firewire M-audio input box for my musical recording into GarageBand. The only reason I'd want to upgrade is that I can't burn my movies to DVD (iDVD requires 733Mhz and it only has a cd-rw) and iMovie has a hard time even exporting back to tape.
For a 5 year old machine, it runs like a dream and still runs 90% of the apps I need it to. As an added bonus, I can't remember the last time I re-booted it.
In the same time frame, I've re-built new machines for my daughter twice (probably due to just plain physical abuse and constant spyware downloading), my wife is on a PC laptop after her desktop couldn't cut it anymore (a virus that couldn't be eradicated), and I re-built my PIII 600 to be a dual P4 1Ghz that I run all non-mac stuff on it.
I could probably use a new G5 in the next year or so that will allow me to make DVDs from movies, but the P4 powerbook is still my main computer and probably will be for another year or so. I can't even imagine a 6+ year old PC running the same apps, without a virus checker.
The Dell desktop we bought at the same time as my powerbook is in the storage room in the basement as spare parts