How reliable are Apple notebooks?

Dude, the reason why most people buy apples are for their reliability. Thats the reason why I switched and got a new G5 imac and a 17 powerbook. I havent had a problem yet with any of them, except the hinge on the powerbook is kinda loose, but I think thats because the screen is so big. I love my macs. I havent heard any problems with both lines of notebooks from Apple myself, but you never know. Personally I think that eventhough they are more expensive than a Windows pc, you pay for the relaibilty.

9 months here, not a twitch w/ re: to anything requiring service. it's locked up on me 2x (early on) during that time, and that was while i was editing DV content, listening to itunes, chatting, surfing, writing a paper, and authoring a DVD. i'm assuming the regular updates to the OS have played a part in it not having any further issues since. my windows machine which i had done a fresh install of a month before getting the iBook, has had ~3 BSODs, up until the last week where I had 2 more, and now BSODs everytime windows boots, not cool. nice to have my iBook around!!!

EDIT: oh boy, and now my entire 250GB HD w/ 2 partitions, my windows install, and who knows how much data, is now being reported in windows setup as being unpartitioned space. fvcking windows....

2nd EDIT: Many thanks to Acronis' Disk Director Suite!!! I used the partition recovery function, and it did a fine job of recovering the partitions! Mind you, clicking on "My Computer" now tries to install Adobe Acrobat before giving me an explorer window, but hey, I can get my data off it now before a fresh install, right?

don't forget as well that it's not uncommon for ANY brand to have battery recalls.

for example:
http://www.firingsquad.com/news/news...?searchid=8242
http://support.dell.com/support/topi...recall/en/main
http://redmondmag.com/news/article.asp?EditorialsID=508
http://slashdot.org/articles/04/06/27/1338201.shtml

it's interesting that when it happens w/ Apple such a big deal seems to be made of it.

i know you're in BC, but try following up on the following site. their applecare prices are pretty similar to the academic discounts apple offers. does your friend qualify for applecare academic prices? in any case, i'd call the store and see if they ship up nort' eh?.

http://www.lacomputercompany.com/cgi...=sku&sku=10125

i don't know if u r adding in taxes w/ the mentioned prices, but applecare for an ibook is $288 CDN w/ the edu discount. make sure to select the appropriate applecare when shopping about. and as i think u may have noted before, it's not essential that they get applecare right away. he/she can simply sign up for the extended care within the 1st year's warranty period.

Just read the user surveys from pc magazine and consumer reports. Both of those found apples to be quite reliable and will give you a much better idea than just asking random users on a forum. Not that there's anything wrong with the opinions here, but one person's (or a few peoples') isolated experiences don't tell you much about the overall reliability of the brand and the likelihood of failure/problems.

I have Apple laptops from the from the early 90s to know and they ALL STILL WORK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Apple laptops tend to be reasonably reliable. The major concern I have with them is their durability, particularly with the powerbook line. It's not quite what it could be.

No probs here. Going on 2 years. Very reliable, and VERY intuitive.

I bought my first PowerBook 2 years ago, a 12" 867mhz, after about a year the HDD crashed, only problem I ever had with it. I think it was somewhat related to the fact that it was dropped when i had a pretty big accident, it went like a discus :/, so a few months later, the HDD went ka-put.

I've had this PB, 15" 1.33ghz, for a year now. The only problem I have is that I have some annoying dead pixels and some whitespots on the screen, its a known PB problem, i just need find the time to part from my baby and send it in.

Hope this helps-
-Mike

BTW: Most iBook G3 and some G4 users I know experienced Logic Board problems within a year, if not sooner.

Haha yeah the screen problems are a pain. If apple made a decent screen housing it wouldn't happen

As far as laptop drives go, I've decided after a year and a half if it's still running I'm suspicious of it.