Yes, it’s true. The hard drive in my Apple Powerbook G4 died over the weekend. I managed to get my important data off it before it crashed for good, but I had to hold it at a bizarre angle to get the hard drive to spin up properly. Very strange. After spending an hour on the phone with Tera at Apple’s tech support, we agreed it needed to be sent in. Fortunately, I had purchased an extended Applecare warranty, and I was still covered. They’re going to repair it for free.
Regarding the extended warrany: it’s definitely a good idea to get a warranty, even if you think nothing could ever happen. Hard drives fail all the time. How could they not? They are essentially a bunch of stacked magnetic plates, spinning around at high velocities. Even the slightest deviance could cause the whole thing to fail. Eventually, solid state drives will replace these magnetic monstrosities…