I bought a Lemon!

S

stickydick

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So I think that I bought a lemon of a mac. (iBook, G4.)

Ever since I bought it, I have had the 'black screen of death' at least once a week and having owned PCs before so didnt think it was a big deal - but expected a bit more from macs, so tried to take it back. I was told that I should update all the software, and was sent on my way. I dealt with this for a 8 more months or so and the day after my warranty expired, my hard drive died which I replaced myself as apple wanted $400 to do so. Things got better - for a couple of months, and now I can not start it without the black screen (please restart your computer) appearing. The hardware diagnostics CD says that there is a problem with the Memory (RAM, I figure) and I received a message like MEM2:104.1 DIMM and either J1 or BUILT IN. Forgive the lack of specificity, as now I can not even get the Hardware CD to run a diagnostic. I have tried booting with different ram, with no ram (i.e. only the built in ram of 128MB) and have no luck. Anyone know what to do? How much it would cost? Anyone heard of a mac being so crappy in such a short time? (I am in FL, and Applecare is not offered down here...jeez, maybe the heat and the humidity scares apple although I am very kind to my beloved puter.)

Thanks for any help,

Sticky D
 
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well it is not the heat and humidity. it sounds like your onbard memory is bad. i hate to say it, but you bought a lemon. if you know someone with some micro miniature repair skills, have them fix it. if not, i dont know what to tell you. PM me with your location and if you are near where i live in florida, i can see if one of the micro mini guys in my shop can do it.
 
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If the problem pre-existed before your warranty expired, and they failed to help you solve the problem (by suggesting the wrong solution), then it should still be up to Apple to fix this, outside warranty or not.
 
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Yea, thats what I think. If you can prove that you took the computer in to be fixed before the warranty expired and they didnt help. They should definitely fix it.
 
OP
S

stickydick

Guest
Thanks for the advice folks. Guess it is good to hear at least that Apples rarely do this - I would love to get another in the future but am a bit gun shy right now; not to mention that I don't have two pennies to scratch my arse with at the moment. I called Mac, and they just keep telling me that the warranty has expired and require $50 to even continue the conversation. So, I have just written a bunch of letters to corporate, public relations, etc. and will keep writing - hopefully something will come of it, as this is my only option right now - being a poor sorry med student!

Thanks again,

R
 
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stickydick

Guest
Anyone wanna buy a nice tasty lemon?

OK. I give up. After pleading with apple and the store manager, they were somewhat sympathetic, offering me a $200 discount on a refurbished mac, or $300 to repair my existing one (which does indeed have a fried logic board.)
Thing is, I am kinda put - off macs right now; and would like to sell all my mac accessories and even the fried laptop. Does anyone have any ideas of whether or not these things are worth selling for parts? And for how much? (Ballpark.)

Rich
 
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jn4jenny

Guest
Well, ironically enough, you could sell the entire machine for parts for around the $300 mark. Or if you have a lot of patience, you could probably get more by parsing it out part-by-part.

But do consider this: The two things that can go most wrong in a Mac and that cost the most money to fix have ALREADY happened to you. If you replaced the HD already and the logic board will be replaced by Apple, there's a good chance that your machine will be okay for a long time to come. It's very unusual to hear about people with TWO logic board failures or TWO hard drive failures.

If you're truly disgusted with the thing, you might also consider getting it fixed THEN selling it as a working machine with the 90 day parts and labor warranty that will come out of the Apple Flat-Rate Repair. If the prices look good on Ebay (meaning that you'd recover the cost of repair and then some) then maybe that's the best option financially.
 

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