Bad luck with PowerBooks

I went through 4 completely defective I-Pods in 4 months (not a single one lasted longer than 11 days) and I still never got a working one but despite that, decided to tempt fate and bought a 17" Powerbook tonight. It booted and I can post this. Am I stupid or what?

I bought a 15" PB in August for school. About a month ago, the battery started going wonky. It would not charge past 74-77%. However, the local Apple Outlet in Vancouver was able to order a replacement battery for me. The only problem was that I had to wait for them to assess the problem over a few days before they could order the replacement. As a new Apple user, I was impressed with the hassle-free process. This is the only problem I have had with my PB so far. Knock wood!

Statistically, Consumer Reports has found that Apple laptops have about a 17% defect rate. Apple ranks second out of eight major laptop manufacturers (Toshiba has a better record). Compaq is the worst at 22%. Apple desktops have a top ranking and a 12.5% rate, about 4% better than the next manufacturer (Sony). Gateway was the worst with a 24% rate. Individual tales of woe aside (including my own), Apple does pretty well. Computers in general are just pretty awful.

i've had problems with both my Powerbook G4 and an old iBook G3 that i used to own. The iBooks backlight would fuzz out and my Powerbook's HD crashed a few months after i bought it. However, Apple was courteous and fixed all the problems under the warranty. Overall, I think their hardware is pretty good, because i haven't really had that many problems in the past 5 years, except for the ones i mentioned above. and i have used other brands, like Dell, IBM, and their laptops and hardware have the same or more problems, so i don't think its a problem with apple specifically, just a problem with manufacturing in general.

I have a 5 year old G4 tower running 10.3.9. I have added additional RAM, an additional hard drive, and a USB 2.0 PCI card. The machine is bulletproof. I try most of the small applicatons that TUAW lists on its website and I have never had any problems. My black and white 4G iPod also works really well. My girlfirend's iPod (both bought for Christmas last year) recently had the HD crash and the local Apple store replaced it on the spot (no more problems, so far). A friend updgraded her iTunes software recently and had the same problem of her music library disappearing that others posters have noted. I got it fixed, but the reason I use Macs is to avoid these PC problems. Apple should be striving to maintain their image as a company that cares about consumers and provides them with the best products possible.

I also had an awful 3G iPod experience. Apple sent me two bad replacements after my first one went south. Finally I got one I use, even though the USB port doesn't work. I would NEVER buy a refurbished Apple product. Macintouch had document how unreliable those are. I suspect Apple outsources product recycling and fails to supervise them very well. As for Apple software products -- my experiences with iPhoto and OS X have convinced me that Apple's product quality standards are fairly low, probably lower than Microsoft's. I primarily use Apple products and buy Apple hardware and software. The alternatives are not great. Microsoft's products probably have fewer bugs, but they are fundamentally ugly (www.faughnan.com/msword.html). Dell's hardware quality is probably even lower than Apple's, and besides, they only run Microsoft software. AppleCare is no panacea; they send refurbished devices back and see my comments on those! My iPod debacle was covered by AppleCare, but the hassle factor was enormous. I now use my credit card's extended warranty. If something fails out of extended warranty I replace it. Recently I bought a G5 iMac and a Nano. Both are working well. I want to buy Aperture, but I'll wait until version 1.1. I do not recommend EVER installing a major software upgrade or new product from Apple or buying a new hardware product (ok, so I bought the Nano -- but I was taking a risk). They simply don't value reliability enough. Alas, we don't have many alternatives ...

The only problem I've had with my hardware since I bought my first Mac in March is with the wireless keyboard, which kept picking up and dropping its connection every couple of seconds. I had it replaced with no fuss by a local reseller and have (so far) had no further problems. I agree though that Apple Care is advisable for recent switchers. P.S. To comment 2 by Tom, I think I'm right in saying that USB 2.0 devices will work in USB 1.1 ports, but at the lower transfer rate?

I've seen few problems with the new Apple computers I've bought, but for any laptop or all-in-one that I buy, I make sure that an Apple Care comes with it out of the factory. I have a G4 tower that I've rebuilt and it's been giving me some trouble, but that's mostly due to lackluster troubleshooting on my part. The only time I've actually seen repeated problems is with 2 iPods. One 20 gb 3g and one 40 gb 4g. Each one has been replaced a number of times for verious reasons, and the 4g has just gone up recently without ever being plugged in. I've never seen problems like this, but, once again, I'm thankful for the APP.

I bought a 12" 1.5GHz Superdrive PowerBook about 2 1/2 months ago because I lost my PCs from Katrina and had been looking to switch for a long time. Everything's great! One note though - it seems as though with all of the Macs that my buddies and I have bought, the factory install of OS X is likely problematic. All of us took the time (at least after a few glitches and crashes) to reformat our hard drives and it was smooth sailing from then on!

Hey, heck, If your power cable keeps burning out and you're plugging into the same socket, it might be an issue with power surges in that outlet. We have one plug in one of the labs that I manage where the power keeps burning through surge protectors. The way around this is to either get an electrician to look at the plug or invest in a UPS power surge protector with a battery. Sure, this just means that you'll have to replace the UPS every six months or so instead of the power adapter, but it's something.