ibook very sick

[Eugen Leitl]

I've been told iBooks are rather tough, but I've been still handling
mine quite carefully. It's been running through, though, though mostly
with display brightness dialed down to zero.

Since yesterday (just as I've moved my email to it) it crashed just as
I've put it on my lap. Some box telling me it needs rebooting in three
languages popped up, looked like a low-level OS failure. It's been
crashing at slightest provocation since (fetchmail died with signal 30
?!), making it unusable. I've noticed that mechanical handling greatly
accelerates crashing (though it also died when I was rsynching the home
directory -- trying to rsynch root seems to generate bus errors).
Basically just picking it up will kill it reliably, so I'm suspecting
something in the hinge is triggered by the display wobble. The hardware
test is running through fine -- when it's not crashing in the middle of
it, that is. Some comfort.

I've got that thing in January, so it should be no problem (albeit a major
annoyance) to get it fixed on warranty, but I'm curious whether this is a
common failure mode, and whether one should be very careful with hinge
region in general. In case hardware failure is widespread it would a major
point of disappointment (a minor one being the increasing sluggishness in
use, requiring periodic reboots once a week to keep the machine
minty-fresh, and from crashing) with the unit, as I need a rugged, 
reliable machine on the road.