Sounds like a fatigue failure of a solder joint. Soft solder, used in PCB assembly, has low fatigue resistance, and the newly introduced use of environmentally friendly lead-free solder may make it worse.
Fatigue can be caused by temperature cycling (hot laptops, remember?) or by mechanical flexing of the board in a case that is not sufficiently rigid. Both are more extreme in a laptop than in other PC housings. Advice: keep it cool and treat it gently.
It can be mitigated by placing large components away from hot areas of the board, providing support and stiffening, and sometimes by changing the orientation of components.
Trouble is, with speed and compactness as marketing priorities, thermal and mechanical considerations take a back seat and mistakes are made.
Apple should admit to this one.
By the way, my old TV set recently suffered the same problem, but then it has seen 15 years of service and cost a lot less than an iBook.
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From the viewpoint of an engineer...
Sounds like a fatigue failure of a solder joint. Soft solder, used in PCB assembly, has low fatigue resistance, and the newly introduced use of environmentally friendly lead-free solder may make it worse.
Fatigue can be caused by temperature cycling (hot laptops, remember?) or by mechanical flexing of the board in a case that is not sufficiently rigid. Both are more extreme in a laptop than in other PC housings. Advice: keep it cool and treat it gently.
It can be mitigated by placing large components away from hot areas of the board, providing support and stiffening, and sometimes by changing the orientation of components.
Trouble is, with speed and compactness as marketing priorities, thermal and mechanical considerations take a back seat and mistakes are made.
Apple should admit to this one.
By the way, my old TV set recently suffered the same problem, but then it has seen 15 years of service and cost a lot less than an iBook.