| Archive for Downsizer For an ethical approach to consumption |
| sean |
Anyone got...A contact email/name and address for anyone sensible at Apple? I'm geting slightly sick of being shunted from pillar to post. |
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| dougal |
Chances are anyone I might have had dealings with has left.
Wassa matta? |
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| sean |
Hard drive's died after 16 months. Out of Apple's guarantee obviously, but as far as I can find out the manufacturers guarantee them for three years, so a four hundred quid bill to replace it seems a tad harsh. | ||
| Bernie66 |
You should have bought a microsoft pc 
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| Treacodactyl |
Is it worth emailing of the the helpdesk sections of the Mac mags? Sometimes the Pc press can get things sorted when it's taken us mere mortals months of chasing. | ||
| dougal |
IIRC, you have a fairly early iMac G5. Originally Apple's concept was that these would be "self-maintainable", with users able, even encouraged, to provide the labour for unplugging the modules. On the first (two?) versions the HD was fairly easily accessible. And they are utterly standard IDE drives (parallel originally, now serial). Any such drive can be used (there is no need to purchase one from Apple or the licensed bandits ("Authorised Service Providers") who have a monopoly of real Apple spares. (IMHO its illegal, but I ain't taking on Apple's legal dept, thanks.) However, its an ornery hard drive, just like you'd find in a PC. After fitting the new drive, boot off the system CD and find Drive Setup on the menus. Run that and format the new drive. A 250gb drive is what, about £75? £400 should get a hand-crafted, slow-roasted Marks and Spencer drive... Whereas the original drive would have been, what, 80gb? Apple don't make hard drives. No PC manufacturer does. (¿Samsung, Hitachi? Not specifically for their own machines anyway.) They are bought-in commodity components. 1/ Don't even consider paying £400. Ouch! 2/ If someone has already taken your money and won't return it have a word with trading standards and maybe the local paper. 3/ I'd just upgrade the drive to a bigger, better, faster one. And then see if the drive manufacturer's warranty gave any support. But it'll probably be designed to cost you more than the drive is worth to ship it to their warrenty claim evaluation centre, somewhere convenient like Timbuktu. And its an older slower drive... maybe useful if you have an external usb2/firewire box spare, though. 4/ Its not terribly hard to take apart the later iMacs, I believe, though I've not been there myself. |
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| dougal |
Here are folk that will replace your hard drive for £34+vat + cost of the drive. But they suggest DIY unless you have an iMac with a built-in ("iSight") camera above the screen.
http://www.macupgrades.co.uk/store/machine.php?name=imac-g5 And here's how easy it is on an early iMac G5 http://manuals.info.apple.com/en/imacg5_HD17_DIY_EDU.pdf (there's no modem in the 'education' model...) |
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| sean |
Thanks. | ||
| sean |
Cool. The independent computer shop in town have offered to get the HD manufacturer to replace the drive under warranty.
Gives you a warm glow about small traders dunnit? |
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| Treacodactyl |
Take care with the old one if it has any confidential data on it (bank details, passwords etc). It've very easy to recover deleted files! | ||
| Nick |
Make them your port of call of choice every time, and tell everyone else about them, and they may even grow bigger and better. (And, obviously, out of town and such... )
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| sean |
I already use them all the time. Paying a bit extra for the occasional bits and bobs is a small price to pay for their willingness to lend me bits of kit, let me have stuff on tick etc. | ||
| Northern_Lad |
And don't worry about loosing such info - we've got it littered about the site in various places. 
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| sean |
Yee-ha. Done, and just reinstalling OSX. Thanks again Dougal. And to the mac-upgrades people who were extremely efficient, and helpful over their non-premium rate phone number. So, Apple's official repair people rate their labour at about £550/hour, hmmm. | ||
| dougal |
Apple spares look more expensive the older the machine is. So you could be paying a six-year old price for an "Apple" 4gb hard drive. (Machines are "no longer supported" beyond about 6/7 years...) But, despite Apple's strenuous efforts, there is still a vibrant "third party" industry. I've said it before. Insanely great products. Shame about the company. Especially in the UK. |