Death of a computer suite

[DMcCoy]

As some of you may remember I was having issues with the reliability of my 2006 imacs. Well, it's gotten worse.

The Apple saga:

36 iMacs purchased
4 Macbook Pros
1 PowerMac G5 (no intels at the time)


So far:

10 iMacs stolen (in one go, from storage).
1 Macbook stolen

4 replaced batteries
2 dead macbook logic boards

5 dead imac HDDs
1 dead G5 HDD

Now the killer costs

5 iMac screens replaced, all with the same manufacturing fault. This has cost vast amounts.
1 dead iMac logic board

Today I found 2 more dead screens, and I have another waiting to go back.

Thats 8 out of 26 dead screens (remember 10 were stolen :P) that have failed.


If anyone has any contacts inside apple uk let me know.

[Michael]

That's absolutely awful. I can't believe you've had so many failures in a short space of time, let alone equipment being stolen.

I ordered a 40" screen for a customer from my supplier yesterday and have literally found out the bracket has arrived but the television hasn't. It appears at the moment it has gone "missing". I'm not too concerned as the supplier is sorting things out, but not exactly discreet is it?

[Domino]

Jesus, thats more MAc hardware failures than I've ever heard of

they being used as goalposts...?

[webman]

Ever thought of just using PCs?

[torledo]

We've had dodgy batteries (macbooks), screen issues (imac g5's), dead hdd (imac g5) and a logic board or two that needed replacing....it's par for the course with macs....faulty hdd's in the imac g5 is absolutely no bother, they are ridiculously easy to replace and what's the cost of a replacement 250gb SATA II drive ? not a lot.

Surely, if there was a manufacturing defect with your imacs, apple would have been able to match the serial numbers of your machines with the batches affected, and would have repaired for nothing. Ofcourse Apple can be funny with repairing items not under applecare so i can imagine that if your machines were a few years old they could have been less than helpful....we learned our lesson the first time around and got 3 years applecare with every intel imac we purchased.
If they develop a fault after three years it becomes more cost effective just to replace with new.

It sucks that you have to add that cost to an already premium purchase and they're support sucks....but what can you do ? I still reckon there's no better machines to run windows than the imac and the macbook black. Installing windows on the imac was easier than on an hp dc7700 where i had to a**e around with downloading drivers and dealing with hardware detection errors post install.

[mac_shinobi]

We've had dodgy batteries (macbooks), screen issues (imac g5's), dead hdd (imac g5) and a logic board or two that needed replacing....it's par for the course with macs....faulty hdd's in the imac g5 is absolutely no bother, they are ridiculously easy to replace and what's the cost of a replacement 250gb SATA II drive ? not a lot.

Surely, if there was a manufacturing defect with your imacs, apple would have been able to match the serial numbers of your machines with the batches affected, and would have repaired for nothing. Ofcourse Apple can be funny with repairing items not under applecare so i can imagine that if your machines were a few years old they could have been less than helpful....we learned our lesson the first time around and got 3 years applecare with every intel imac we purchased.
If they develop a fault after three years it becomes more cost effective just to replace with new.

It sucks that you have to add that cost to an already premium purchase and they're support sucks....but what can you do ? I still reckon there's no better machines to run windows than the imac and the macbook black. Installing windows on the imac was easier than on an hp dc7700 where i had to a**e around with downloading drivers and dealing with hardware detection errors post install.

Which is exactly why I got apple care for my newly purchased mac pro

[DMcCoy]

Surely, if there was a manufacturing defect with your imacs, apple would have been able to match the serial numbers of your machines with the batches affected, and would have repaired for nothing. Ofcourse Apple can be funny with repairing items not under applecare so i can imagine that if your machines were a few years old they could have been less than helpful....we learned our lesson the first time around and got 3 years applecare with every intel imac we purchased.
If they develop a fault after three years it becomes more cost effective just to replace with new.

Google "apple vertical lines U2N"

Apple have been no help whatsoever. It's costing me around £400 a screen at the moment.

Logic boards for the Macbooks (with soldered on cpu, gpu etc) are around £700.


Thats more dead LCDs than I've had from 5 times as many PC tfts in the same period.


Oh, and Dell did a free replacement scheme for their affected laptops using the same 17" panels

[dirtydog]

I thought we had it bad! All our macbooks have applecare and I think Ive had work done on 13 or 14 out of about 16 now. Battery failures, logic boards, top plastics cracking/discolouring, one LCD. Our new iMac suite hasnt been fault free either but that was mainly HDDs failing... the most annoying thing is when they just decide to not boot etc and we have to re-image.
Generally the desktops are pretty reliable compared to the laptops though.

[kingswood]

Over 150 Macs (Macbooks, Intel iMacs, G5 iMacs, MBPs, Mac Minis, 2 XServes and RAID) with the following faults:

1 Mezzanine graphics board on XServe replaced (Applecare)- works fine
1 Superdrive on G5 Powermac (Applecare)
2 Batteries on Macbooks (Applecare)

That's all folks!

On the other hand of a batch of some 25 Fujitsu laptops recommended by County..some *20* have needed new HDDs and some (I think three or four) new screens.

[DMcCoy]

Oh, one of the dead screens was replaced just 6 weeks ago due to the same fault. It wouldn't be so bad if the students were damaging them, but all I've had so far is a missing mouse and keyboard when a machine was removed to be repaired.

[HodgeHi]

Over 150 Macs (Macbooks, Intel iMacs, G5 iMacs, MBPs, Mac Minis, 2 XServes and RAID) with the following faults:

1 Mezzanine graphics board on XServe replaced (Applecare)- works fine
1 Superdrive on G5 Powermac (Applecare)
2 Batteries on Macbooks (Applecare)

That's all folks!

On the other hand of a batch of some 25 Fujitsu laptops recommended by County..some *20* have needed new HDDs and some (I think three or four) new screens.

2 Batteries through applecare? I didn't think that these are replaceable through applecare? Thats what i have been told anyway and i think it says it in the t & c's as well.

I've had the need to have an iSight camera repaired and also the need for a new battery for a Macbook. I also need another though hence my comment above.

[dirtydog]

2 Batteries through applecare? I didn't think that these are replaceable through applecare? Thats what i have been told anyway and i think it says it in the t & c's as well.

I've had the need to have an iSight camera repaired and also the need for a new battery for a Macbook. I also need another though hence my comment above.

Batteries are not generally covered but we had issues where staff let batteries completely discharge over a holiday period then the battery appears with an X and becomes unusable. Apple said it was a known fault and there was a software update which fixed it after they replaced the batteries.

[HodgeHi]

Batteries are not generally covered but we had issues where staff let batteries completely discharge over a holiday period then the battery appears with an X and becomes unusable. Apple said it was a known fault and there was a software update which fixed it after they replaced the batteries.

How come this sort of information isn't readily available on their website? I don't have any support contracts with apple since they cost £££ so i can't call them up for support.

This sounds like the issue i had. One day it was working fine. the next day i had an X in the corner and the battery wouldn't charge.

We had to buy a new one (battery) IIRC.

[dirtydog]

How come this sort of information isn't readily available on their website? I don't have any support contracts with apple since they cost £££ so i can't call them up for support.

This sounds like the issue i had. One day it was working fine. the next day i had an X in the corner and the battery wouldn't charge.

We had to buy a new one (battery) IIRC.

Ouch! We don't deal directly with Apple we go to an educational reseller nearby who do all our repairs etc. The batteries are supposed to store a tiny amount of charge but they didn't for some reason and then wouldn't recharge afterwards IIRC hence the software update to fix.

[HodgeHi]

Do you remember or know which update this was? Whether it was a firmware update or a software update for tiger and if so around what time?

I ask because at one point the software update server just wasn't working and so i had not runa nd software updates for a while on the Macbooks?