Severe distortion/screen goes black on my G4 Powerbook

Hi. I recently bought a refurbished G4 15in Aluminium 1.6ghz Powerbook
from Cancom in the UK which is a large and reputable outfit. It came
with a three-month guarantee. Apart from the fact that it doesn't seem
to give as much battery life as it should for what is more or less a
new machine, I was very happy with it until yesterday. I was using the
Mavis Beacon typing prog when suddenly (and at the 4/5th time of using
the prog) the screen broke up completely and utterly. There was no way
I could see anything to close down the application, so I force shut
down the G4. I launched Mavis Beacon a second time and aftger a few
minutes the same thing happened, so I force shut down again and
removed the MB program. That was yesterday. Later I started a chess
game with the included OSX application but after 2/3 minutes the
screen simply went blank. It didn't go to sleep, it just went blank.
Same routine - force shutdown. Today, the same thing happened. Before
I get onto Cancom and have it investigated under the guarantee, has
anyone had a similar problem? Or does anyone know what might be
causing this behaviour? All I can think is that the video card is on
the blink, and for all I know that might have been why the G4 was
returned to Apple and then passed on to Cancom in the first place. I
would welcome any comments (emailed straight to me if you like - that
MI5 messages nutter might be putting people off. PP

In article
,
pfgpowell wrote:

> Hi. I recently bought a refurbished G4 15in Aluminium 1.6ghz Powerbook
> from Cancom in the UK which is a large and reputable outfit. It came
> with a three-month guarantee. Apart from the fact that it doesn't seem
> to give as much battery life as it should for what is more or less a
> new machine, I was very happy with it until yesterday. I was using the
> Mavis Beacon typing prog when suddenly (and at the 4/5th time of using
> the prog) the screen broke up completely and utterly. There was no way
> I could see anything to close down the application, so I force shut
> down the G4. I launched Mavis Beacon a second time and aftger a few
> minutes the same thing happened, so I force shut down again and
> removed the MB program. That was yesterday. Later I started a chess
> game with the included OSX application but after 2/3 minutes the
> screen simply went blank. It didn't go to sleep, it just went blank.
> Same routine - force shutdown. Today, the same thing happened. Before
> I get onto Cancom and have it investigated under the guarantee, has
> anyone had a similar problem? Or does anyone know what might be
> causing this behaviour? All I can think is that the video card is on
> the blink, and for all I know that might have been why the G4 was
> returned to Apple and then passed on to Cancom in the first place. I
> would welcome any comments (emailed straight to me if you like - that
> MI5 messages nutter might be putting people off. PP

See what Cancom has to say. Arrange to ship your PB back to them for
repair. Any computer can break, even a new one. Usually, buying a
refurbished computer is not a problem.

Good luck.