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My first computer was a Radio Shack TRS-80 Model I. My second, a kit, was the Timex Sinclair 1000. My third was the Radio Shack TRS-80 Model 100. In 1984, I bought the first Apple Macintosh computer and I have been a Mac guy ever since having owned a slew of Macs that served me well.

My current Mac is a 17-inch Powerbook G4 1.67 GHz “Aluminum.” It’s hard disk gave up the ghost in November, but I won’t hold that against. I’ve lost a number of hard disks over the years and I expect I will lose others in the future (I do a back-up daily, just in case).

However, another problem occurred in the fall that is making me reconsider my allegiance to Mac. It seems that a batch of 17-inch Powerbooks manufactured in Shanghai in April 2005 have defective screens that begin breaking down 12 to 18 months after their date of manufacture. The defect is the appearance of one-pixel-wide vertical lines on the screen. One line showed up on my screen in the fall and now there are four.

The lines are very distracting and I expect the problem will worsen because most 17-inch Powerbook owners have it a lot worse than I do (see what I am talking about here).

The straw that is breaking this camel’s back is that Apple is refusing to recognize their manufacturing defect and recall the defective computers for a fix. Instead, they are recommending that owners fix themselves at $1000 a pop for a new LCD!