The Invisible RAM
I ring in the new year with a return of PowerBook woes.
The hard drive is making scary noises and I'm experiencing increasingly-frequent lock ups. And now I noticed in System Profiler that I'd lost a 1/2G of RAM. Turns out this is a common issue and there is now an online petition about it.
I'm about to put AppleCare to the test. I want them to replace the RAM and/or logic board, give me a new drive, and ideally a new LCD - I have some of the dreaded 'white spots. Problem, is the behaviors are intermittent, and Apple has not acknoweldged the logic board problem at all. We'll see...
Update: I did in fact try to take it to the Apple Store in downtown SF, as Sam suggested. This is also what the AppleCare rep suggested. However, this is not a good idea - the wait for a 'Genius' was 90 minutes. There apparently is no way to just drop the thing off and go. Heck with that. (Sam reports the wait at Stonestown is much shorter, but I'm not going all the way out there).
Called for the box from DHL, got it Friday morning, put the machine in, called them again, they came back in the afternoon, and off it went. So far so good with AppleCare.
More updates: got the machine back on Tuesday. Very fast turnaround. Unfortunately, all they did was swap out the logic board. No new screen, no new drive, no explanation. Maybe I have to resort to talking to a genius.
I also noticed that they reinstalled the one RAM chip I sent them to the upper slot - the one that doesn't malfunction. Maybe a coincidence, or maybe they were hedging against the possibility that the bottom RAM slot would fail again. Hmm.
You'll have no problems getting them to fix any of that. My suggestion is to walk into the Apple store with it.
There was a 5 minute wait at Stonestown which is pretty easy to get to. I dropped my laptop off on the 2nd, it flew out on the 3rd, they fixed it on the 4th, shipped it back on the 5th, and I picked it up on the 6th. I was out of warranty so a replacement motherboard and replacement screen cost $327 since both defects would normally be covered by the warranty. AMEX is actually going to pay for it though since they double all my warranties. Though charging only $327 for fixing this and AMEX's Buyer Assurance program makes me wonder how worth it 3-yr Applecare is.
Hope yours goes as smoothly.