14 DAY TRIAL // The Aluminum PowerBook G4 notebook is not really old, since it was released on the 7th of January 2003 and was discontinued last year, between February and May. These notebooks featured PowerPC G4 processors running at speeds between 866 and 1670Mhz and a design that's really similar to the MacBook Pro we can get today from Apple. When released, PowerBook's new features included FireWire 800, faster USB ports, built-in AirPort Extreme and Bluetooth, as well as a fiber-optic backlit keyboard. Things looked fine back there, but after a while, problems started to occur...
The plagued PowerBook is the G4 17" 1.67Ghz model M9689, and its problems are concerning the display. These are not small problems, but big ones, unfortunately. The majority of these PowerBooks were manufactured in the W8 factory based in Shanghai around April 2005, and the affected models develop one pixel-wide vertical lines of various primary colors on the screen, and this problem began to appear after one year to one year and a half after the purchase.
The worst part of this entire story is that you wouldn't expect a high-end notebook to develop problems after one or two years, so most customers decided not to purchase Apple's extended AppleCare warranty, leaving them discovered in front of this problem.
The result of all this is that a lot of PowerBook G4 owners without AppleCare warranty but with display problems are looking for answers on Apple's support forums, and if things are not going to work well for them, we may see some really angry Mac users in the near future. I don't know how this is going to end, but I really hope that Apple is going to show some good will and replace all the plagued displays with a substantial discount, if not for free. Can anybody hear me up there?