22 Responses for "Electrified House and the Shocking PowerBook G4"

1. the ronin

   June 1st, 2005 at 2:20 pm

   1

   DUDE CALL AN ELECTRICIAN. DON”T FUCK AROUND AND BE SCIENTIFIC ABOUT IT. THERE IS A LOOSE GROUND.

   I WON”T TELL YOU WHERE IT IS CAUSE YOU”LL TRY TO FIX IT AND KILL YOURSELF.

   CALL AN ESTABLISHED ELECTRICIAN NOW !!!!

2. Jay States

   June 1st, 2005 at 2:23 pm

   2

   What version is your powerbook. My old 667Mhz did display similar problems. The shocks were also at the wrists, but I assumed that was because (1) The computer was 4 years old and (2) the paint around the laptop was gone. (by far the worst design element).

   I now have a new powerbook… 5 days old and so far nothing.

3. Joe

   June 1st, 2005 at 2:30 pm

   3

   It’s a 1ghz PowerBook G4 Titanium.

   Ronin: calm down.

4. limulus

   June 1st, 2005 at 3:05 pm

   4

   I’ve got a 867 MHz Titanium, and when it’s plugged in with the grounded cord I often discharge any static charge I’ve built up when I touch the metal exterior. So the case itself is certainly grounded when plugged in.

5. the ronin

   June 1st, 2005 at 3:10 pm

   5

   As an ecletrician getting shocks are nothing to be calm about. Get a electrician. Stop being so smart, yet so dumb.

6. hudson

   June 1st, 2005 at 3:24 pm

   6

   SHOCKING!

   My Ti/500 does the same thing to my wrist. I tend to find it happens more when I’m sitting on chairs with rubber feet (I assume that’s because I’m insulated from the ground).

7. Joe

   June 1st, 2005 at 3:31 pm

   7

   I seem to vaguely recall the cable guy saying something about the grounds when he hooked up the cable… but I promptly ignored and forgot.

8. Wali

   June 1st, 2005 at 4:19 pm

   8

   In this situation I myself would look around the net for a way to find out if my house is grounded. Then if it wasn’t so I’d see if there were any easy ways explaining how to do such a procedure. Lastly I’d hope that everything worked out.

9. JC

   June 1st, 2005 at 4:27 pm

   9

   My ibook has issues when it’s plugged in… the metal rings and screws on the bottom and the button to release the lid can all deliver mildly painful shocks, usually only if the skin they’re touching is damp (which it tends to get after having a hot laptop with no ventilation sitting on top of it)

   Nothing else in the apartment has a problem, just the laptop. And it happens when I’m on the road, too, so it’s the laptop, not the house. I’m going to get some silicon pads or something to put over the metal rings and stuff, one of these days.

   As for your house, well, Ronin was typing in all caps like a hysterical AOL newbie, but he’s right… even if you don’t fry yourself, you could be frying your precious electrical equipment…

10. Joe

    June 1st, 2005 at 4:34 pm

    10

    After all the comments about having the laptop plugged in I decided to try an experiment:

    I put my foot on the air vent and started moving my hand against the laptop (this sounds like a dirty book) and there was the familiar current.

    Then I unplugged the laptop and lo and behold: no current. So what’s that mean?

11. mrlarter

    June 1st, 2005 at 8:46 pm

    11

    sounds like an issue with the laptop. power is escapting it and its flowing through you to the vent. had this issue once with a lamp.

12. freddy

    June 2nd, 2005 at 3:07 am

    12

    if you have noticed, apple laptop’s adapter has no GROUND PRONG (the round, long one)!! all the other non-apple laptops and appliances have it. i guess apple thought that safty measure is neglectable?

13. Andrew Kember

    June 2nd, 2005 at 4:46 am

    13

    AFAIK, ground pins are only necessary when the unit is not double-insulated. Lots of consumer electronics have only two wires (live and neutral). No idea where an apple laptop fits in here.

    I had this problem when getting wet washing out of my washing machine - I’d feel this funny tingling when I touched the drum. That turned out to be a house-wide earthing problem, solved by an electrician strapping everything he could find to chunky ground wires.

    Anyway, if you want to swap your laptop for my washing machine, that’d be just grand.

14. Joe

    June 2nd, 2005 at 6:33 am

    14

    Apple laptops do have a ground prong. The box part of the power adapter is interchangeable between a cord with a ground prong, and a small two prong piece shown here. I always use the cord that has the ground prong.

    I hope it’s not power escaping the laptop, but I wouldn’t doubt it. This sucker has had so many things go wrong with it:I had dead pixels, a “titanium” hinge cracked in half for no reason, the hard drive went bad, the power adapter crapped out and the keyboard got worn out. Everything but the dead pixels happened out of warranty. I called apple about the broken hinge to no avail… but through certain means I was able to get them to comply and fix it for free.

    For as much crap as this thing has given me, I will never purchase another laptop… but I still can’t complain too much, at least it’s a Mac.

15. Griffith

    June 2nd, 2005 at 8:39 am

    15

    I’m really sorry that so many bad things happened to it. I got a little disapointed with my laptop also, it came with two dead pixels that I failed to notice on the store and one of the plastic hook-shaped things that hold it closed broke (well, someone broke it). But besides that I’m really happy and I’m using it much more than my desktop now.

    Actually, I wouldn’t mind selling my desktop and replacing it with a cheaper computer to serve as just a “download server”.

    Best of luck in the future.

16. Joe

    June 2nd, 2005 at 8:59 am

    16

    Thanks, hopefully I won’t be having any more problems.

    I’m just glad that Apple was nice enough to fix the hinge seeing as it would have been somewhere in the neighborhood of $2000 to get it fixed (the entire screen needed to be replaced due to the hinge breaking and actually ripping a hole in the bottom of the monitor)… and all I had done was shut the laptop.

17. conglacio

    June 2nd, 2005 at 11:28 am

    17

    all your mega hz are escaping

18. D. Citrin

    August 23rd, 2005 at 2:49 pm

    18

    I just moved to Europe and am using a 1 GHz G4
    (PowerBook5,1 (version = 3.3)). I thought I
    was nuts when I felt little shocks in my forearms at thhe edge of the mmachine (but not
    my fingertips).

    I just read the comments, and am going to get
    a grounded plug converter. (The one I am using
    is not.)

19. Nick

    November 4th, 2005 at 4:00 pm

    19

    I have experienced the same problem and hove found this it is due to not having a ground connection on the plug (you will see on the plug when removed from the transformer that it is a standard 2 pin connection, like the one used in video players etc, there is also a slot where the metal round pin fits on the transformer. You nee to make sure that this slot has a metal connection to allow for grounding) if like me you own an ipod it will come with a plug that will fit the PowerBook transformer, the plug supplied with the ipod has a metal ground prong but no connectors for the pin on the transformer, hence no grounding for the PowerBook. I you have a proper earthed plug you should have no problems.

    Hope this resoles the issue.

20. Rachel

    December 19th, 2005 at 11:09 pm

    20

    I have had the same problem. I just bought a G4 Powerbook 12 in… I spent a month in Sweden and noticed that when I had my computer hooked up to an outlet via a converter I could feel a strong current coming off of it. I immediately changed the plug head directly from the external battery pack and still felt the current. I just got back to the States and feel a mild current still. My computer twice froze when I was in Sweden, and once when I turned the computer on, the date and time suddenly changed to 1969. I am freaking out that I am frying some chips, and will be calling Apple to see what’s up. Interesting to hear, though, that other people have had the exact same problem.

21. Rowan

    January 16th, 2006 at 9:30 pm

    21

    I have the same problem on my Tibook G4. I took it into an apple centre recently for its end of three year warrantee round of fixits.

    Quite a long list unfortunately as my powerbook (which has for the most part been great) gets a hell of a lot of use..

    They told me the shocks were the result of build ups of static electricity in the machine and this was quite common and nothing to worry about.

    I am slightly suspicious as I have only noticed this over the last few months.

    Along with this I had my screen hinge snap- they so far will not fix this even though it was not the result of a drop or any other accidents I am aware of.

    They are replacing the DVD drive which had become very unreliable and my power supply which seemed to occasionally deliver a fluctuating current which in turn periodically crapped out the invertor for the LCD backlight causing my screen to go dark.

    I would love to hear from anyone who has succesfully had their screen hinge replaced under warantee. As far as I am concerned it is a design flaw and they should take care of it.

22. WEN

    April 23rd, 2006 at 9:55 am

    22

    Maybe I discovered this a bit too late (9 months late? I confess I shouldn’t be reading somthing that old! ;) ), but I thought I’ll add my comments.

    In March, I recieved a US powerbook, imported to the UK, trouble is that the PB didn’t have the right plug, so for the time being, I used a Generic UK 2-pin adapter, then I started getting shocks. Looking at the adapter, it has 3 pins, (yes, 3!), at first, I thought it was a straight 2 pin adapter, live and neutral, with the metal knob stablising the 2 pin adapter that goes on the head of the Power supply.

    I talked to my father and he thought it was an earthing pin, but I ran a test at the date I write this, tested the earthing on the PC with a Multimeter set to DC, the read out was under 150mAs, this was hooked up to either the radiator (in which case, I used the unpainted part, inside the bleeding valve, the rest of the raidator is painted very light blue), then I tried the laptop, the Multimeter crept upto 300mA, then settled down to under 150mA.

    Before anyone says that the house earthing is crap (I have been given 70V shocks from a desktop PC, because it wasn’t earthed properly with a plug that had a stable earth connection, solved by replacing the power coard!), I found a tester in my fathers room, it tests the earth state of my plugs, the tester thinks that all 4 sockets are correctly earthed. Seems like it isn’t earth properly as we’d expect.