Vertical line issue also plagues some iMacs
Summary: On Friday I posted a piece about a problem with vertical lines appearing on PowerBook G4 17-inch screens just as they got outside of their three-year AppleCare warranty.Anecdotal evidence suggests that there may be a similar problem with some third generation 17-inch Intel iMacs with serial numbers in the W860****U2N range as reported by MacNN in November 2007.
On Friday I posted a piece about a problem with vertical lines appearing on PowerBook G4 17-inch screens just as they got outside of their three-year AppleCare warranty.
Anecdotal evidence suggests that there may be a similar problem with some third generation 17-inch Intel iMacs with serial numbers in the W860****U2N range as reported by MacNN in November 2007.
The same situation exists as with the PowerBook G4s. Apple won't acknowledge the problem in iMacs and has a track record of deleting and/or locking posts on its message boards. A petition on the issue has over 1,000 signatures and states:
The defect causes vertical lines (cyan/yellow/pink) to appear cutting through the screen and multiplying as time goes by. Unfortunately, the problem starts to appear right after the end of the one year warranty.
One French user was succesful in taking Apple to court in France over vertical line defects in two iMacs and was able to receive a full refund on his machines.
The vertical line defect has been compared to the PowerBook lower memory slot failure (also here) from February 2007 and the PowerMac G5 coolant leaks first reported in June 2006.
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Talkback
What part is breaking?
The problem described is .....
Welds
solder weld/connection or cable issue. Back years ago I had an
ACER 14" monitor that failed just outside of the warranty. ACER
wasn't interesting in replacing it and they lost a customer. When I
cracked open the CRT I found the solder welds for the switching
transistor that controlled the green gun and blue gun were cracked.
A quick re-warming, and in-depth look with a magnifying glass
over the rest of the board found several fatigued solder welds. It
was heat issues, no doubt about it.
Good (spooky) story timing
Makes me wonder who made my monitor or if this is symptomatic of older 17" LCD monitors? :(
Most likely you are running NVidia Graphics
My bet is that if you put another monitor on your system that you will still see the artifact.
Is the monitor connected to a desktop or laptop? Dell and HP have offered to repair at no charge for 1 and 2 years after warranty expires respectively for issues relating to the NVidia chips.
ATI X800SE Graphics Card
Thanks for the unexpected help.
RE: Vertical line issue also plagues some iMacs and iBooks?
Vertical line issue plagued one in ten Apple IIC's so what's new?
In the Intel world I had one power supply fry on me and IBM just replaced it because it had fried before its rated seven years was up. Try getting Apple to do that. The last motherboard I had that fried was on an Emachines and since it had fried before its rated seven years they just replaced it for me. I have had multiple hard drives fail before their rated life spans and every time the company that put them in the box just replaced them.
Your best bet is to leave the Apple world and actually get value for your dollar. Dual core boxes are obsolete and a quad core replacement for a Mac would only cost you half as much if you are a poor technology shopper. I picked up a Dell Inspiron 530 quad core for $441 off the sale rack and it runs Windows and Linux much, much better than the dual cores do so I suspect that even Mac users who don't have a clue how to shop would wind up paying the full $740 for the Inspiron but compare that to the cost of the latest Macs and you see it is twice as powerful and even comes with five hundred gig of hard drive space and three gig of ram.
It is impossible to do comparison shopping for Mac hardware because it is all obsolete and on the bargain basement shelf for roughly 3-5 hundred dollars which means that the Mac hardware is being sold at over 300% retail. Are you getting better quality for that money or just ripped off. These recent problems are nothing new for Apple users. They should all do a lawsuit and demand that the Apple company pay them back what they have over paid for Apple computers.
You're in need of a serious update
Vertical line issue also plagues some G4 iMacs
The local Apple Store believes the only fix is a motherboard replacement since the video is integrated on the logic board.
Apple needs to fess up and stand behind all their products! Apple, love your products, but hate how you treat loyal users who experience a product design/manufacturing defect!
Is this the same issue as the one reported over at AppleDefects.com in '07?
Apple is facing a large and growing number of defective products.........
<i>Apple won???t acknowledge the problem in iMacs and has a track record of deleting and/or locking posts on its message boards.</i><br><br>
The despot can only hide behind lies and censure for so long.
RE: Vertical line issue also plagues some iMacs
as it is Apple's responsibility to quality control and factory
faulty.
RE: Vertical line issue also plagues some iMacs