iBook G3 Snow White 2001

[EvilCapitalist]

Case flex will be what killed most the machines I was around/supported.  These were in the hands of HS students, so they weren't treated gently and were opened/closed many orders of magnitude more than a standard user.  With all the cabling for the screen running through that tiny opening for the screen hinges (also near the main exhaust port...great idea, Apple!) I figure it wasn't so much the backlights failing as cabling getting pinched or worn.

Definitely agree that the G4 iBooks were much better in terms of reliability than the G3s, though personally I like the early G3's case design better.  The later opaque G3s and all the G4 iBooks show wear horribly owing to that bright white plastic case.  More than once I heard them referred to as yellow-snow iBooks after they'd been in service for a while.  It's too bad they never booted OS9 natively.

 

[KnobsNSwitches]

I worked at an AASP when the icebooks were current. Smelly keyboard syndrome was (is!)  real. It is a very particular odor, and I can recall it to this day. Maybe whatever was causing it had to do w/ local weather humidity or something? Which explains why some folks have never smelled it and others insist it's endemic to the models.

 

[ppcoutlaw]

Oh yes. It is very real . Before I got my units, Chris , the former mac guru at REPC in Seattle smirked a bit and handed one over for me to sniff. I about burned my nose out. It is kinda like scorched electric gym socks. He said that some had the smell,and to get rid of it you had to get another keyboard to replace the smelly one. I recall he said that it was a supplier issue for that particular part number. One supplier used a glue /adhesive that eventually would start to let you know it was there.