[luckyjoe]

I've had my iBook since April 2004. A rare occurance since new has been random shutdown, with the date/time reverting to Dec. 31, 1969, 7:01pm after rebooting. All instances have been the same, either gaming (Tony Hawk or Demios Rising), or simply using the iBook on my lap. Is this a known fault, documented repair (Power Management or Battery) Issue?

I did take it into an Apple Store and they had it for two weeks only to reformat the HD, say there were no problems found, and charge $75 for software support (read: DO NOT GO TO APPLE STORES FOR SERVICE!!!)

I have not had the chance to run under identical conditions to see if it still shuts down, but since they did not test it under the situations I described - I bet it will.

Regards,

Tom P.

[jmagic]

no idea what the problem is there, but i've had good experiences with the apple store service

sorry about what happened

[ghporter]

Originally posted by luckyjoe:
DO NOT GO TO APPLE STORES FOR SERVICE!!!

I believe that your experience-and lack of satisfaction with that service-is atypical. There are hundreds of Apple Stores with really smart folks at the Genius Desk, who satisfy customers day in and day out. A blanket statement from your single bad experience is not realistic.

Also, as an electronics technician, it is often difficult to duplicate some problems, which is probably why they kept your iBook for so long. When they couldn't get the problem to reappear, what could they tell you? That they didn't find a problem. And they don't work for free, you know.

Now, did you give them excruciatingly detailed information on your infrequent problem? That would have been useful. Intermittent problems are the most difficult to track down, and any and all information about what's going on when the problem occurs, what the user was doing, sometimes even what else was going on in the room at the time, are all potential clues for what's wrong with the item.

It does sound like a PMU-like issue, but I'm no expert in the iBook's guts.