Horizontal Lines in New Powerbooks

Any chance you can manipulate a camera in such a way that you can photograph what you're talking about? I'd love to see a picture before you send it back in... it sounds like a really strange problem.

mkrishnan said:

Any chance you can manipulate a camera in such a way that you can photograph what you're talking about? I'd love to see a picture before you send it back in... it sounds like a really strange problem.

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There's a PSD of what it looks like, as well as others with that problem, on the apple support site:
http://discussions.info.apple.com/webx?14@710.vRHxaGiYSrs.1@.68bd0112

It is pretty bad you're getting it repaired after 4 days, can you get your money back because it's so close after purchasing?

I fear this problem will be around for a while..

Thanks for the link, Anthony.

I know EXACTLY what you mean. When I had my quicksilver, this happened on my LCD. Finally I found out it was on the wrong refresh rate. I changed it to the only other available choice and the lines were gone.

I went through 3 of the LCD's returning them for being defective. However, everyone that looked at it said I was crazy...I knew it was probably an easy fix.

However, you probably can't change the refresh rate on your PB....but your picture there looks exactly like my LCD looked with wrong refresh rate.

Yeah my new 15 did this and I ended up taking it back to the Apple store. I spent the last few days on the phone with AppleCare and they didn't seem to think this was a problem. I almost felt like they thought I was crazy or being way to picky. I know how a CRT looks with the wrong refresh rate but I've never seen an LCD with the wrong refresh rate in action. If it was the wrong refresh rate would the lines look static like in the picture above?

If this does happen to be a refresh rate thing I wonder if Apple has bad video chips/card or it's a firmware/driver thing. Hopefully they iron this out so I can go back and purchase a new 15. When I returned my 15 I looked at all the 15's in the Apple Store. They suffered from the same line issue that every other 15 owner has claimed.

VisualForces did you send that image into Apple/AppleCare? Hopefully everyone that owns a new 15 will call Apple and report this problem. This way it gets taken care of quicker.

VisualForces said:

After talking to Apple Care, they seemed to think they could fix it. Hopefully they're right. I didn't have the image at the time, but they'll be looking at it directly here in a couple of days...but at least I have some evidence of what it looks like before sending it.

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Can you please keep an update on what Apple plans to do... Thanks

This may sound really stupid, but check the colour setting at System Preferences>Displays and check that under "Color" it says "Millions" rather than "Thousands".

I had my screen replaced, and when it came back the screen was really grainy and had lines on it, and I was panicking, and then I found that setting and that was all it was. It didn't look like a colour issue on mine, it looked like a bad quality screen. Why the technicians set it to that I have no idea.

I'm sure yours is a more complex problem, but worth checking if it means you don't have to send it in.

Heck with all these problems I may be forced to chain myself to a desktop.. I hate the fact of not being mobile...

17's too large for my taste (owned one) and 12 is too small (never owned).

My biggest fear was that Apple would try to sweep this under the rug and silently fix them; like the white spot issue! You know I just bought ram for the new machine and the new ddr2 ram won't fit into older models. Plus I've been spoiled with the new real estate. It's like Apple giveth and Apple taketh, NOT COOL!!!

Visual, here is a pic of my screen. It looks pretty good to me...
If you want I can take a pic in the same way you did it and we can compare.
Cheers

tribe3 said:

Visual, here is a pic of my screen. It looks pretty good to me...
If you want I can take a pic in the same way you did it and we can compare.
Cheers

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I think you need to take a picture of the screen with a camera, because that shot looks absolutely fine to me.

VisualForces said:

Is that a screenshot or an actual picture?

I hope it's a picture...cause that would make me feel a LOT better about this!

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It's a screenshot.
Are you taking a picture of the screen with a camera?

LCDs are so finicky. Keep us updated.

When your PowerBook does come back, please take some pictures of the new screen.

Every new PowerBook I have seen seems to have this problem to some extent - some more than others. It is more noticable the brighter the screen backlight is. I tend to keep mine turned down (usually below 50%) and most of my work on the machine is programming and the like, so I haven't noticed the lines too bad, but they *are* there...

If they do replace the screen with something that is better then I might have to send my PowerBook in when I can afford to part with it for a week...

~Jeff Corbets

Just wanted to chime in...

I went to the Apple store today, because I am selling my iMac to get another PB (I miss my old Rev A even w/ its' "features")..

Both of the new 15"-ers that they had on display had this issue that everyone is talking about. It is not as bad as I thought it would be, but certainly is noticeable when taking a close look at the screen.

As VisualForces said, I am thinking about getting the previous revision just to avoid these issues. $1599 as a refurb....