PowerBook fiasco in progress!
April 7th, 2005
It had been almost 3 years, and I was looking to replace my aging PowerBook G4 15″ 667MHz. I was waiting & hoping that Apple would release a PowerBook G5 at Macworld Expo, but instead there was a respectable spec. upgrade and price drop to the PowerBook G4.
I ordered an 15″ PowerBook G4 from Small Dog Electronics back in January 2005. I actually order it a week or so before the model refresh was announced. I had to wait until the announcement was made before my order was canceled and I had to place a new order. All in all, it was about 4 weeks from my original order date before I received the new PowerBook.
Maybe the delay was partially my fault. I ordered a custom configured build to order(BTO) laptop with all the bells an whistles. There is only 2 ways to get a custom BTO PowerBook. Either order directly from the Apple Store Online or Small Dog. I choose Small Dog since I could save on sales tax, shipping and the California computer Recycling Fee.
I ordered a 15″ 1.67GHz PowerBook, with 2×512MB RAM, 80GB Hard Drive, 8x SuperDrive, and the 128MB VRAM video card.
I was thrilled with the new laptop when I finally got it. It was fast and appeared rather durable. Wednesday I got some bad news…
I wouldn’t have even known I had a problem, if I hadn’t read it on MacFixIt.com. I caught this article in their news feed.
I checked, and I have the exact same symptoms they describe.
- My “About This Mac” pane reports 512 MB DDR SDRAM.
- When I run the Apple Hardware Test from the CD I get: Memory: Error detected at startup & ERROR CODE post/0/2048 SODIMM0/J25LOWER [sorry for the crappy camera-phone pic.]
- Apple System Profiler(ASP) reports the lower slot as empty.
- When I swap the RAM modules positions, ASP still reports no RAM in lower slot.
I called Small Dog Tech Support Thursday since they didn’t respond to my email from Wednesday.[Actually Small Dog emailed me a few hours after I called them. I have to give them credit for following up. See. The only weird thing with this email is that Small Dog is passing me off to Apple Care.] They confirmed that they were getting similar reports and that my computer was still under warranty. They advised me to try taking it to a local repair shop since it would be more convenient for me instead of shipping the laptop back and forth to Small Dog in Vermont.
It’s not life threatening. My laptop is still running. I’ll have to find some time to get to local repair shop sometime in the next few days.