My Mac is stuffed. Ancient mac repair in Canberra

creative_canberran said :

Checkmate: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13506_3-20108336-17/apple-tops-in-customer-satisfaction-for-8th-year/?tag=cnetRiver

I think that’s a misprint – it should say “customer self-satisfaction”.

gooterz said :

creative_canberran said :

Kramer said :

If you had bought a PC, this would not be a problem.
Sorry, just had to say it…
but Apple business model = proprietry hardware = expensive to repair.

Independent statistics from US and Australia show:
1. Apple have a lower failure rate
2. People are far more satisfied with Apple computers
3. Apple computers tend to last longer

I’m willing to be in fact that the whole “more expensive” thing is because people are used to Wintel machines that they throw away more often and run out of puff sooner, hence they’re not worth repairing.

Stats can show anything
From what i have seen in person, though selling apple products (mainly Ipods) some of their items have failure rates of 25% or more.

That means that one in 4 people had to return their ipod for repair, 1 in 16 had to do it twice and so forth.

Theres pleanty of examples like this http://appledefects.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=396

Also i think that people who own Mac’s dont always use them as much as their PC brothers.

While at the library uni the Mac i was forced to use (all the PC’s were taken) got my USB drive stuck in it. The drive broke before the socket let go.

Checkmate: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13506_3-20108336-17/apple-tops-in-customer-satisfaction-for-8th-year/?tag=cnetRiver

Also that USB drive story is total BS.

cranky said :

This being the ACT (Another Country Town), I suspect Edwin Bien is also a highly regarded Jaguar car engineer of some years ago.

Guess he saw the light 🙂

Yeah, to go into business fixing something that goes bung more often than a Jaguar!

poetix said :

AverageCanberran said :

Patronising.

That’s what I hope to be doing, as in paying for them. If you think I am patronising, you have never been treated like an idiot by a 19 year old who was born to computers like I was born to vinyl records.

Yeah, don’t get worried by those 19 year olds. They think they are king s**t right now, but in a couple of years time when they join the real IT industry they’ll realise just how little they actually know.

Take it to somewhere that is cheap, but older hardware might just not be worthwhile repairing… You can get some really good deals on mac’s and PC’s these days, rather than spending $400 on repairing a old piece of equipment which is at it’s end of life and could have other parts ready to fail you might consider spending $500 on a replacement machine.

As for the “macs are better than PC’s crowd for this reason” (and the vice versa people) you wanna be geeks are funny 🙂 …

idler said :

I got what seems like a reasonable quote to help with kernel panic with my 2003 iMac from …

Anyone who can give you a simple quote to fix a ‘kernel panic’ Id be avoiding like the plague. A ‘kernel panic’ could be caused by anything from bad cache/memory to a harddisk needing to be checked.

My best suggestion would be to find a friend who is familiar with macs. They may not be able to fix your system, but theyll be able to look at the problem and give you advice on fixing it or whether the quote is reasonable. Its like asking if $400 to fix a noise in your car is reasonable… if its a ford laser needing a new fan belt, its different to a bmw needing a new valve. We can offer advice but youll need someone in-person to give a real opinion.

Contact Pat Kelly, at the phone no posted earlier. Apart from knowing his stuff inside out, he has contacts inside the ACT Apple Users Group, whose members tend to have old Macs lying around.

You don’t say what the symptoms are. Most common problem with eMacs is failing video, which usually requires replacement of a certain internal video cable. Getting inside an eMac is not difficult, just fiddly.

cranky said :

Slightly OT but,

This being the ACT (Another Country Town), I suspect Edwin Bien is also a highly regarded Jaguar car engineer of some years ago.

Guess he saw the light 🙂

In a moment of insanity I bought a partially restored vintage jag in the late 80’s, and had it serviced by an asian bloke named Ed Bien of BienJag in Fyshwick, presumably the same guy. I assumed he was a standard spanner jockey at first, but was quickly surprised by his knowledge of computer related topics and a variety of other things. A very very smart bloke indeed.

tommy said :

Grail said :

For those of you who are having trouble remembering what PC you had back in 2006, it would have had a Pentium 3 or 4 in it. In 2007 you would have bought a Pentium Dual-Core (“Allendale”). 2006 was also the year the PS3 and Wii were released.

My PC which I originally bought in 2002 is still going – started running XP it’s gonna die running XP. I’ve changed the CPU once – upgraded from a Celeron for a P3 off ebay. Changed video card 3 times (for gaming requirements but if it was just running web browsing the original one would have been fine) – but as you say I’ve reached EOL with AGP. Memory upgraded once – second hand (for gaming). HD’s have failed 2 times so far (new replacements to avoid MTBF). Changed monitor 3 times – all second hand. I give it another year – it’s a lot noisier than the new PC.

I’ve had the same axe since 1970. Replaced the handle in 1985, and replaced the head in 1991, still going strong.

Grail said :

For those of you who are having trouble remembering what PC you had back in 2006, it would have had a Pentium 3 or 4 in it. In 2007 you would have bought a Pentium Dual-Core (“Allendale”). 2006 was also the year the PS3 and Wii were released.

My PC which I originally bought in 2002 is still going – started running XP it’s gonna die running XP. I’ve changed the CPU once – upgraded from a Celeron for a P3 off ebay. Changed video card 3 times (for gaming requirements but if it was just running web browsing the original one would have been fine) – but as you say I’ve reached EOL with AGP. Memory upgraded once – second hand (for gaming). HD’s have failed 2 times so far (new replacements to avoid MTBF). Changed monitor 3 times – all second hand. I give it another year – it’s a lot noisier than the new PC.

creative_canberran said :

Kramer said :

If you had bought a PC, this would not be a problem.
Sorry, just had to say it…
but Apple business model = proprietry hardware = expensive to repair.

Independent statistics from US and Australia show:
1. Apple have a lower failure rate
2. People are far more satisfied with Apple computers
3. Apple computers tend to last longer

I’m willing to be in fact that the whole “more expensive” thing is because people are used to Wintel machines that they throw away more often and run out of puff sooner, hence they’re not worth repairing.

Stats can show anything
From what i have seen in person, though selling apple products (mainly Ipods) some of their items have failure rates of 25% or more.

That means that one in 4 people had to return their ipod for repair, 1 in 16 had to do it twice and so forth.

Theres pleanty of examples like this http://appledefects.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=396

Also i think that people who own Mac’s dont always use them as much as their PC brothers.

While at the library uni the Mac i was forced to use (all the PC’s were taken) got my USB drive stuck in it. The drive broke before the socket let go.