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druber · May 25, 2003, 11:27 PM

Original Dual-USB iBook, owned for just over a year. Lots of travel, every day to school when I was teaching, etc. Kept up so far. Lately, as in the last couple of days, the screen brightness has been acting up. Like it goes to the dim mode while I'm still typing away. Noticeable, but wasn't too sure I wasn't imagining it.

Today, however, the screen's just jumping between brightnesses. Not constantly, but a lot. It's not displaying anything odd, no artifacts or different colors or anything. But all of a sudden it clicks darker, darker, and brighter again. Maybe it'll stay at regular brightness for a while, but without moving anything it'll start flickering again. Now I'm worried.

Bought this at MicroCenter, open-box, and they gave me a 3-year warranty on it. Haven't called them on this yet, but it this gonna be a horrific hardware repair? Anyone seen this before?

iBook 500, 384/10gig/CD, 10.1.5

molala · May 26, 2003, 01:26 AM

the flickering happened to my iBook (it would be really dim, then off, then dim... but never bright). also would happen without moving the display or the iBook. they had to replace the logic board, which seems to be a pretty standard procedure. it's good that you get extended warranty!

druber · May 26, 2003, 09:50 AM

This is not real technical, but when I smack on the left handrest, the brightness at least partly comes back. Is it possible that there's just a cable that's kinda loose in there? I mean, I can't imagine that it could receive less power and still light the screen. But I don't know why, um, hitting it would even temporarily help. So yeah, I'm gonna go back up this sucker big-time. Will I still be able to use it if I hook it up to an external monitor? This is not my favorite thing ever.

vvedge · May 27, 2003, 12:02 PM

Originally posted by druber:
This is not real technical, but when I smack on the left handrest, the brightness at least partly comes back. Is it possible that there's just a cable that's kinda loose in there?

The left handrest seems to be the spot where if you can trace a problem there, you would be best to get it looked at. The hard drive is there, and when my last iBook repair pinpointed my problem to flexing my handrest, I had to get it sent in for a new logic board and hard drive.

druber · May 27, 2003, 06:01 PM

Sounds like the consensus, and I'm not gonna patch this up on my own anyway and call it fixed. Not in a laptop. If they do replace the HD, any chance they'll put in a larger one? You know, to make up for all the hassle?

MrNo · May 27, 2003, 08:17 PM

I had the same problem with my old iBook 500. The flickering would appear from time to time, mostly after bringing the computer back from sleep. I've sent it to Apple 3 or 4 times and everytime they shipped it back saying that the problem could not be replicated. Since they could not fix it I had no other choice but to sell it.

druber · May 28, 2003, 03:09 PM

Ouch, that's not nice. I'm afraid I can't go five minutes without replicating this. And sometimes now when I wake it from sleep I hear this really weird flange kinda sound, like a low oscillating feedback. Wow, this is sure neat and fun.

Anyone have experience with repairs by MicroCenter?

tikki · May 28, 2003, 03:12 PM

I had this problem repaired once while I was still under warranty. It reappeared about six months later, so now I am SOL unless I wanna fork over a nice hunk of cash to get it fixed. I will save my money, and just get a Powermac.

jtc · May 29, 2003, 02:10 PM

Originally posted by druber:
If they do replace the HD, any chance they'll put in a larger one? You know, to make up for all the hassle?

Ha! Keep dreaming. I've sent my iBook in three times for the exact same problem. Have had the HD replaced twice, CD drive replaced once and screen repaired a couple of times and they still haven't fixed the original problem. Now the case is totally scratched up and looks like crap from all the repairs. Once Apple has your money they could care less about customer satisfaction, let alone "making up for all the hassle"

Giles Booth · Jun 4, 2003, 03:46 PM

Druber, I have exactly the same problem after 18 months almost-daily, very happy use of my 500mHz iBook - luckily the store I bought it from offer 2 year's guarantee, and it's currently away being fixed. But I'm not happy. Not happy that they might send it back saying they can't replicate the fault. Not happy they may replace the HD and I lose all my data (yes I did back most of it up, but it's a hassle) and certainly not happy that it sounds like this fault will probably re-occur once it's out of guarantee...