Horizontal Lines in New Powerbooks

[Nereus]

My main concern is... will Apple ignore this issue in the future, seeing as to how they "got away with it" this time round they just might.

I certainly hope that they make an official statement about this problem, and the best way to force Apple to do this is to make noise. Call Apple and let them know. I've talked to many swedes who have bought a new PB and when they called Apple here in Sweden they didn't know about this issue at all. I'm going to call them first thing on Monday.

One question. I have had my PB for over 14 days, which means I can't get a refund (which I don't want, I just want my bloody screen fixed), but this problem is covered by the guarantee, isn't it?

 

[generik]

Maybe Apple deliberately made this revision a POS to encourage us all to upgrade to the Intels when they come

 

[fps]

Ah ah

Maybe Apple deliberately made this revision a POS to encourage us all to upgrade to the Intels when they come

Funny you wrote that because it crossed my mind 10 mins ago

My take is Apple want to avoid killing their sales for the coming weeks towards the Holiday period when people spends money like there's no tomorrow. So they don't acknowledge the issue, people keep buying (no lost sales or only a few because I haven't see this pbm mentionned in the more *general* press), in the meantime they work silently on a fix (software or hardware or both), the production lines get fixed and finally they now have a stock of machines without this pbm which they can send to those people who complain

They kind of have it both ways: no need to acknowledge a QC issue and no lost sales (or very few). Sounds very much like Apple to me

 

[simplymark]

not sure if this has been pointed out yet but the shipping time for 15" pb from Apple has been changed from 24 hours to 3-5 days.

 

[mizzi]

i got my powerbook, and i'll keep this short and sweet as i doubt my post will be held in much regard due to it's positive nature.

there's lines...if am 3 inches from the screen. from normal viewing distance and even more extreme than that, the display is gorgeous. my room mate with a previous 15" powerbook is jealous even haha...

to those with problems, my sincerest sympathies go out to you and i wish you all the best of luck. personally, i couldnt be happier.

15" powerbook
2 gigs of ram
200 gig hard drive
dual display set up
icurve
giant freaking smile

-Mark

 

[hopejr]

i got my powerbook, and i'll keep this short and sweet as i doubt my post will be held in much regard due to it's positive nature.

there's lines...if am 3 inches from the screen. from normal viewing distance and even more extreme than that, the display is gorgeous. my room mate with a previous 15" powerbook is jealous even haha...

to those with problems, my sincerest sympathies go out to you and i wish you all the best of luck. personally, i couldnt be happier.

15" powerbook
2 gigs of ram
200 gig hard drive
dual display set up
icurve
giant freaking smile

-Mark

Great to hear!! I'm not so worried about this whole thing anymore.

 

[generik]

i got my powerbook, and i'll keep this short and sweet as i doubt my post will be held in much regard due to it's positive nature.

there's lines...if am 3 inches from the screen. from normal viewing distance and even more extreme than that, the display is gorgeous. my room mate with a previous 15" powerbook is jealous even haha...

to those with problems, my sincerest sympathies go out to you and i wish you all the best of luck. personally, i couldnt be happier.

15" powerbook
2 gigs of ram
200 gig hard drive
dual display set up
icurve
giant freaking smile

-Mark

I got to say that the lines didn't bother me for the most part too, but while I was touching up some photos of my PB in iPhoto earlier, I *really* see the lines.

The big irony? Those photos are meant for putting this PB back onto eBay...

 

[tribe3]

i got my powerbook, and i'll keep this short and sweet as i doubt my post will be held in much regard due to it's positive nature.

there's lines...if am 3 inches from the screen. from normal viewing distance and even more extreme than that, the display is gorgeous. my room mate with a previous 15" powerbook is jealous even haha...

to those with problems, my sincerest sympathies go out to you and i wish you all the best of luck. personally, i couldnt be happier.

15" powerbook
2 gigs of ram
200 gig hard drive
dual display set up
icurve
giant freaking smile

-Mark

Told ya

Enjoy!

 

[YS2003]

Maybe Apple deliberately made this revision a POS to encourage us all to upgrade to the Intels when they come

Only Apple can pull this feat off well as it is said Apple users are very loyal to all things Apple. If my PB has those lines, that POS will be going right back to Apple for refund (once they start fixing things as normal repairing process, they tend to scratch cases).

So far, my 3 PBs, 1 iBook, and 2 ACDs are in excellent condition so far.

 

[PDE]

Mizzi,

I think most of us would be very happy if there were more positive stories here. Congratulations - you won the Apple roulette!

I hadn't sent mine back yesterday so I unpacked it again to see if I could do something more to get the dead battery going, but nothing (pram, open firmware reset etc) had any effect on it. Still says between 30 and 60hrs remaining and then shuts down within five minutes with an indicator that there is no charge at all.

So, enjoy your powerbook and feel lucky! : ) )

Pete

 

[generik]

Only Apple can pull this feat off well as it is said Apple users are very loyal to all things Apple. If my PB has those lines, that POS will be going right back to Apple for refund (once they start fixing things as normal repairing process, they tend to scratch cases).

So far, my 3 PBs, 1 iBook, and 2 ACDs are in excellent condition so far.

I don't know.. personally I don't feel inclined to exhibit any loyalty towards Apple or any corporation at all; even more so nowadays when we are getting clearly shoddy products for the good money we are paying

 

[Gokhan]

k

i was loyal at one time i think apple was but as with EVERYTHING MONEY CHANGES ALL mizzi i am glad you like your purchase as stated before not all people are that bothered with this defect its just when someone charges you £1189 (3000$) for something that is basicly screwed you get very upset and will not put up with it !

for a £400 dell certainly livable but for this noooooo !!!

 

[nesbitt_a]

i was loyal at one time i think apple was but as with EVERYTHING MONEY CHANGES ALL mizzi i am glad you like your purchase as stated before not all people are that bothered with this defect its just when someone charges you £1189 (3000$) for something that is basicly screwed you get very upset and will not put up with it !

for a £400 dell certainly livable but for this noooooo !!!

I'm torn whether to buy one of the new PowerBooks (in the hope of a fix), or go with a refurbished model? Decisions decisions

 

[PDE]

I understand the difficulty of making that decision. Maybe you can find a leftover unit from the past generation? I'm trying to do that as I think it might be a while before Apple addresses the issues of the current crop. Better to go with what we know is reliable than to be a guinea pig for apple.

 

[Clix Pix]

Hooray, Mizzi! Glad that your new PB is in such good shape!

I do hope that for those whose machines are seriously affected by the lines that a remedy will be coming soon.

OTB

 

[Gokhan]

k

look for the older model with eagle eyes

 

[wildcard]

While the lines on my replacement aren't nearly as bad, I continue to suffer from headaches and other problems when using the Powerbook for more than a few hours at a time. I'm not sure if my eyes just don't like the new resolution, some flicker that I'm sensitive to that others aren't, or what. I have a call with Customer Relations tomorrow to discuss my options for getting a refund.

 

[midnight-man]

Couple of days in...

Hi, I was half way through a longish message stating that in spite of lines OSX still pees all over XP anyday of the week and more than makes up for the defect. I am still going to send mine back through principal, but will do so very reluctantly. The reason I didn't send that message but this one is because at the midway point firefox crashed kind of proving the point about the OS. I am writing this from the PC because I have another problem which perhaps someone can help me with...

I have a wireless router that supplies the 3 PCs in the house with internet. Whenever I turn on the powerbooks airport not only does the internet not work, but it kills the whole damn thing for everybody. Not too impressed as we are all working. Any ideas, is there some kind of incompatability when using different machines?

Also, anyone know how to quickly set up a network between XP and OSX to transfer files via cable or wireless. I failed. At the moment putting everything on DVDs which is taking forever, cheers.

Damon

PS. Another microsoft gripe. I am trying to transfer my calenders/contacts from Outlook to iCal/Address Book. Although M$ are more than happy to import all manner of files from all manner of apps, my old Lotus Organiser for example (or indeed Apple). When it comes to exporting they offer, DOS, Windows, Excel, Access, and all the other M$ crap. Not one standard format so I am going to have to manually transfer hundreds of contacts and schedules. Thanks Microsoft, and good riddance.

 

[Spectrum]

I'm glad you like it Mizzi - either you've got a better display that some of us, or we are just more anal

Anyway, I presume you won't be calling Apple... but if you have the time, some of use here would appreciate it, even if all you do is file the observation of the lines with them, the more reports they have of this, the better I think.

Also it might help you to report it now, in case you ever determine that it is a problem for you in the future.

Enjoy!

i got my powerbook, and i'll keep this short and sweet as i doubt my post will be held in much regard due to it's positive nature.

there's lines...if am 3 inches from the screen. from normal viewing distance and even more extreme than that, the display is gorgeous. my room mate with a previous 15" powerbook is jealous even haha...

to those with problems, my sincerest sympathies go out to you and i wish you all the best of luck. personally, i couldnt be happier.

15" powerbook
2 gigs of ram
200 gig hard drive
dual display set up
icurve
giant freaking smile

-Mark

 

[Spectrum]

So... I finally did a pretty exhaustive comparison of my new hi-res PB15 with the old Al15 at work (1.5Ghz, pre-scrolling trackpad, w/10.3 on it).

For what they are worth, here are my conclusions:

The new display is NOT brighter than the old.

The old display has richer colour saturation - noticebale on oranges and reds particularly, and thus actually looks brighter when displaying colours/images.

The new display has much whiter whites. This gives the new PB an illusion of increased brightness - but to me, it is only in the whites, not the colours. The old PB whites remind me a lot of my iMacG4 17" screen, which has a much warmer tone.

Try as I might with various colour-sync profiles, I cannot get the new PB15 to mimic the old in terms of colour saturation and the off-white tint (which is easier on my eyes). Changing the whitepoint to D50-60 deoesn't have the same affect. And this is with the old PB15 set up on the default "Color LCD" !

The old PB15 displays NONE of the interference artifacts (wavy or static lines in solid oranges/reds/pale blue windows of mail, iTunes) that the new one does.

And of course - the old display does not have the horizontal pixel banding either.

But, then ofcourse: The new PB has more pixels - its selling point (and one of the reasons I bought it without an additional external display).

So, to my point Wildcard - I too, find the new display to be fatiguing after long periods. I find myself turning the brightness down as far as possible, and half the time frequent Apple-Option-CTRL-8 to invert the whole display to white on black (as I am now). I also have installed tinker tool so that I can turn off font smoothing right up to 16point or more. This really helped my eyes, yet it seems perverse - the higher res should have made antialiasing MORE pleasant surely...?

While the lines on my replacement aren't nearly as bad, I continue to suffer from headaches and other problems when using the Powerbook for more than a few hours at a time. I'm not sure if my eyes just don't like the new resolution, some flicker that I'm sensitive to that others aren't, or what. I have a call with Customer Relations tomorrow to discuss my options for getting a refund.

 

[Nereus]

I'm going to call Apple tomorrow. What should I do? Should I try to get a new 15" PB hoping that the horizontal lines won't be that apparent or should I try to get a refund and perhaps buy a 17"? You who have a new 17" - what do you think? Is it too big to be somewhat portable? I don't want to send in my new 15" PB and get a new one with horizontal lines. Any advice is appreciated.

 

[generik]

While the lines on my replacement aren't nearly as bad, I continue to suffer from headaches and other problems when using the Powerbook for more than a few hours at a time. I'm not sure if my eyes just don't like the new resolution, some flicker that I'm sensitive to that others aren't, or what. I have a call with Customer Relations tomorrow to discuss my options for getting a refund.

It is due to the lines, when you scroll rapidly you will actually notice the text "shimmering"

 

[generik]

I'm going to call Apple tomorrow. What should I do? Should I try to get a new 15" PB hoping that the horizontal lines won't be that apparent or should I try to get a refund and perhaps buy a 17"? You who have a new 17" - what do you think? Is it too big to be somewhat portable? I don't want to send in my new 15" PB and get a new one with horizontal lines. Any advice is appreciated.

Get a refund if you can.

Once your money is in Apple's pocket it is really up to them whether they want to refund you or not. For all I know they can claim the product to be within specs, and cite company policy of not accepting returns for non defective items.

At least that's what I experienced dealing with the local Apple

 

[Spectrum]

Don't all LCDs cause the text to shimmer when you scroll?

--- actually I've just done some tests - it seems worse to me when the background behind the text is just off-white/light grey. e.g. Macrumors. Not as apparent in Word with a white background, or in the new message window of MacRum. But check out the flicker in the tools above the MacRumors new message window with the mid-grey background - very bad!

Also seem to depend on the colour profile...(how grey your greys are)

It is due to the lines, when you scroll rapidly you will actually notice the text "shimmering"

 

[wildcard]

I'm going to call Apple tomorrow. What should I do? Should I try to get a new 15" PB hoping that the horizontal lines won't be that apparent or should I try to get a refund and perhaps buy a 17"? You who have a new 17" - what do you think? Is it too big to be somewhat portable? I don't want to send in my new 15" PB and get a new one with horizontal lines. Any advice is appreciated.

My advice? Mention when talking to tech support that the lines are present in the Apple Hardware test. That rules out anything but a hardware problem, and will result in your laptop being declared DOA. I was advised by Apple sales that my 2nd powerbook would need to be DOA for a refund.