G5 Imac woes

G

gibbleguts

Registered
I have a 20 '' g5 imac. Nothing but problems since day one. I had the motherboard
replaced under warranty. This fixed the problem I had with the display
not working on start up, but many problems still persist.
It freezes up on me at least 2 or 3 times a day. If I leave it running
and it goes into sleep mode, I return to find the fan running like a 747
jet engine and the screen frozen. Also, when I surfing around the web I'll start getting
low memory alerts popping up. It just seems to be running way too hot. If
I have a dvd or cd in there
it seems to freeze up even more often. Not to mention that the disc is so hot
upon ejecting, that you almost need oven mits to touch it. I've had several macs,
and been happy with them all. But this by far the most problematic computer
I've ever owned...mac or pc.
I've run the hardware test with no reported problems.
I even put new ram in, but still the problems persist.
Any ideas? Should I ask for a new one before the warranty runs out in 6 months.
I use it for work and it's a huge disruption to have it serviced every time
something goes wrong . It takes at least 2 weeks to get it back
as there is no place in my town that fixes macs, so I have to ship it
to a place that does.
If so, should I ask for a replacement or should I forget the imac g5 altogether
and go for a tower model. Do you know if there are design
problems with this model in general? I've bought 6 macs for my biz in the last
5 years. This is the first time I've ever had major problems.
(Which is why I switched from PC's in the first place.)
Any thoughts or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
 
The G5 iMac is known for having over a 20% failure rate. Unfortunately, Apple won't give you a new one until you've had it repaired 4 times or so. They really are resistant to giving out new computers. This one sounds like another lemon to me. How much RAM is in the machine already? If you have 256MB, then perhaps it is overheating due to having a lot of apps open. Even 512MB is bare minimum for decent performance so perhaps you should get it up to 1GB. Doing so will cause less swapping to disk and so the hard drive won't need to run as much (won't generate so much heat).
 
Thanks for the insight Applemaz.
20% failure rate? That's terrible!! Especially if they continue
to sell them knowing full well that there's a problem. 20%
is pretty darn significant. Their tech support must be going crazy.
I've got 512 megs of ram right now. I'll add more and see if that's
a fix. If not I'll be getting on their case. Maybe they'll want to keep
me as a customer if they see how many of the darn things I've
bought from them for my business and family members.
I' don't think i'd ever buy another if they gave me a hard time
over this. Thanks again for your help.
Dan
 
The current iMac machines being sold are "revision B" models, and have a much, much, much lower failure rate than the "revision A" iMac machines. Apple doesn't sell the bad batch of iMacs anymore, and they'll happily keep fixing your machine until it works perfectly.

I know it sucks having to deal with repair and going without a computer for some time, but having a perfect computer in the near future is better than having a broken one now. I would suggest patiently, calmly and level-headedly going through the warranty repair process over and over until it's fixed.
 
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