[rpmsd]

What with all the reports of manufacturing problems in the latest run of Powerbooks, I held off buying to give Apple time to work out the kinks.

Now that I have waited 3 months to buy, I want to make sure that I get a freshly minted unit, and not a recycled one. I want a unit that has no mechanical problems with hinges or latches or warping, one that has an 845 superdrive (rather than an 835), and one that has the best possible chance of not having any trackpad problems.

My dealer is not a store that keeps units in stock; they order from a distributor. Can someone please tell me exactly which serial number indicates that a Powerbook was manufactured, say, in the 16th or 17th week of 2005? (These correspond to the 3rd and 4th weeks of April).

In other words, how can I be SURE that my dealer's distributor dispenses a non-recycled unit to my dealer that was made by the factory just last week or even this week, if possible? What are the serial number ranges for units manufactured during these weeks?

Any suggestions for successfully dealing with this issue are welcome. Thanks for all your help.

[timmayXL]

i found this tool:

http://www.chipmunk.nl/klantenservice/applemodel.html

[SpaceRockness]

I'd be extremely careful with using that site's SN decoder since who knows what their *real* intentions are and if they are fishing SNs for free support access...

As for being afraid of buying a leftover early batch of PowerBooks from a retailer, just order direct from Apple with at least one CTO option and it'll either be 1-2 weeks old production or newly built based on CTO. It'll be impossible to know how long a distributor buys of stock, some may keep 10-1000 units onhand and others may just be like that reseller of bulk order when other orders are requested. In the era of maintaining a streamlined operations for shareholder reasons, most companies avoid excess... since computers rapidly change 4-8 mos, distros don't want to be getting burndt with decreased profit.

After having horrible experience with chain stores, Mail-order dealers and local authorized places, I've fallen back to CTOing from Apple since 2003. Probably the only mail order dealer I'd trust is Small Dog, one of the few resellers which goes the extra mile for a customer.

Hope this post helps.

[harald@chipmunk]

Well we have no bad intentions whatsoever!!!!

We were simply fed up of customers buying batteries and memory for Macintosh model so-and-so only to find out later that it didn't fit because the customer turns out to have a different model from what he claimed. Most normal users cant tell the difference between a powerbook G4 aluminium or titanium. Or an iMac G4 that take SDRAM or DDR memory...

So we made this site to sort out this mess for once and for all.

Incidentally if you need a serial number it is far easier to make one up than to scrounge them together this way.

http://www.chipmunk.nl/klantenservice/applemodel.html

We recently added the option to enter hardware problems that you have with a particular model so over time that will reveal if particular models have particular problems.

cheers / harald
www.chipmunk.nl