Snoopy is back
by Volker Weber
Snoopy is back and alive. It has been away twice for a few hours. The first stint was to replace the broken trackpad and the second one to replace the logic board. I turned it in at the local repair shop in the late morning and got it back after lunch. Excellent. The only reason to make two trips is an Apple process that requires the repair shop to send in the machine when they need two major parts or more. By making this two jobs we were able to keep the machine here. Go figure.
A few lessons learned:
- You need AppleCare. The repair would have been around 800 without it. A new machine would be 1000. Without the extended warranty I would have had to dispose of the machine.
- iBooks are more robust than PowerBooks. I have seen a few 12" PowerBooks in the repair shop that had substantial dents in the shell. Aluminium bends, plastic either holds or breaks. Titanium machines were scratched but not dented. They may look beaten but they still work.
- If your machine was in a repair shop, you might get it back better than new. At least this was the case with my iBook. The left palm rest was a bit mushy when I got it a year ago, and it now is very solid.
- The G4 CPU is really tiny when compared to Intel packages. At least it looked that way when I checked out the new logic board.
- When you clean the screen, put it on a flat surface. Window cleaner works very well, but you should never let any of that run down the screen and behind the shell. The inverter board that powers the screen backlight sits underneath the screen. It might fry and then needs to be replaced. You may have trouble explaining why this should be covered by warranty.
- Windows sucks. Period. I had to work on a Windows notebook for a week and I am so happy to have the iBook back.
Comments
First, just one question about point 4. of your list.
Did you turn into the shop a G3 based iBook for repair and you got back a brand new G4?
Please confirm if I understood correctly as this really sounds to good to be true..
However, I still think that 322,80 € for getting an extra 2 years cover on top of the standard warranty for an iBook (Italian list price) is a lot of money. I got the same warranty extension at MediaWorld 4 years ago for about 18 €
And BTW, in over 13 years of owning about 6 different Macs I only had a few HD crashes and never, ever, seen a logic board failing.
Apple to me as proven to meet the highest quality standards in the industry. Perhaps, I have just been lucky but it reinforces my optimistic view in the future. :-)
No, I turned in a G4 iBook and received back the very same G4 iBook with the logic board replaced. And in my book, 322,80 is a lot less than 800. ;-)
(6) Couldn't agree more. (1) Do you think the 2-year Händlergewährleistung would have helped if you haven't had the AppleCare protection?BTW: vowe.net's new motto expresses a fine sense of humor.
Nein. Die Gewährleistung betrifft nur Dinge, die beim Kauf kaputt waren und später entdeckt werden, und nicht etwa die, die während der Gewährleistungsfrist kaputtgingen. In den ersten 6 Monaten muss der Händler nachweisen, dass der Mangel nicht beim Kauf vorlag, danach Du das Gegenteil. Genau aufpassen beim Autokauf: Viele Hersteller geben nämlich keine Garantie mehr, sondern ziehen sich auf die Gewährleistung zurück.
You should go back to that repair shop and ask them what they did with the left palm rest. I think, you could make a LOT of people* happy with this information. This seems to get even worse with new iBooks.
*Including me. ;-)
The palm rest was replaced with the trackpad. It is one assembly.
Would you recommend buying Applecare for an iPod mini? Sets you back 66 EUR. I'd guess it's worth the money because the warranty covers the battery.
