“Apple is facing a new class-action lawsuit that charges the company with failing to fully recognize the scope of a memory slot defect in its PowerBook G4 notebooks, which has left thousands of customers with no choice but to foot hefty repair costs on their own,” Katie Marsal reports for AppleInsider.
“New York resident Giorgio Gomelsky filed the 19-page complaint in a Northern California court last week on behalf of himself and all similarly-situated complainants who purchased an Apple PowerBook manufactured with defective memory slots from January 1, 2003 to the present,” Marsal reports.
“Specifically, the suit alleges that the earlier generation Mac notebooks contain a defect that manifests itself when an owner tries to add additional memory to the first or second memory slot available in most PowerBooks, namely the PowerBook G4,” Marsal reports.
“Faced with complaints over the matter, Apple initiated a Memory Slot Repair Extension Program covering 15-inch 1.67 and 1.5GHz PowerBook G4s manufactured between January 2005 and April 2005, which expired on July 24th. The suit alleges, however, that the scope of the problem extended well beyond the range of PowerBooks that the Mac maker agreed to cover as part of the program.,” Marsal reports.
More in the full article here.
My wife’s Powerbook G4 had a gig of ram, installed by Apple at the time it was purchased. It quietly stopped recognizing 512 MB of it on date unknown. I recently happened to look at the amount of installed RAM, because it was really thrashing the HD with some documents I was working on, and noted the RAM discrepency and wondered whether I had purchased the computer fully loaded as I had remembered. Pulling the cover off revealed 2 modules. We were never notified of any recall, and the computer’s serial number is AFTER the last shown in the list. I don’t want to sue, but I do want the machine fixed – by Apple at their expense.
I was in Afghanistan while this happened. Came home, went to upgrade the memory and nothing. Bought in August of 2004. Left Jan 05, back home in may 2006. Obviously, I knew nothing about it until it was too late.
Mine happened exactly the same a kioneman; my machine just slowed down drastically and I performed the same checks as he did only to find out that the 1Gig ram I purchased only registered at 512MB. I swapped the Ram chips and even purchased new RAM only to have it unrecognized.
I never received any correspondence from Apple or otherwise; there is no way in hell that any consumer should be blamed for not “noticing” a recall. If a faulty product was sold, the manufacturer should repair it.