My evil iMac

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I've created a rant thread for my MacBook. At a different forum, there was one for my PowerBook.

It's my iMac's turn.

This iMac has been plagued with problems.

Let's see a little repair summary:

Hard drive replacement 2
SuperDrive replacement 1
iSight replacement 1


Now, the fans are nuts. I was watching something in iTunes, browsing in safari, chatting in iChat, and mailing in mail. The machine, at one point during that, sounded like a rack server.

The screen flickers a couple times a day, which is slightly worrying. right now, I just smelled something burning a bit. I'm scared about this iMac.
 
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When you've experienced this many problems across multiple devices, perhaps you should be looking for the common denominator that led to all these problems. Namely, it could very well be the power source in your home that's slowly destroying these computers. It could be a minor fluctuation or a voltage droop, but either way, it seems to be the common link that could have caused the problems you've experienced with all of your computers.
 
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iRye
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Well, I don't have my iMac connected to a UPS. And if I bought a UPS, it wouldn't be brown. :p

That could very well be. This iMac has been slowly decreasing in usability over the last two years. Right now I have iChat and Safari open and the fans are at full blast.
 
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do u live in a hot/cold, or humid/dry climate? do u have dust all over ur house (sorry for asking), and what kash said, it could be a power source problem...
 
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iRye
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Where I live, it's very dusty. I keep my iMac very clean, I clean the vents often. I baby my Macs.

I also live in CowTown™(Calgary, Alberta), so we have a cold, dry climate. It is very dry here.
 

eric


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as the others have said - could be some common denominator. but at this point you may want to look at other options:

power lines
aliens
brother
gremlins
etc.
 
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I've been wondering about this sort of thing. I live in a very dry area (clean air though) and I'm constantly having to discharge static to keep from popping my iMac. I actually touched a 120 gig MaxStor a month ago and the shock arc was painful. It immediately stopped working! Argh.

This sort of thing is pretty obvious because you know when it happens. Still, I'm living in fear of trashing my new computer because of static electricity build up. The aluminum keyboard isn't helping things either.
 
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Can i suggest you download a program called icyclone which can be found here - http://www.alitacrew.org/icyclone/download/iCyclone.zip

this can allow you to control the fans and monitor the temperature of your imac. I do not recommend running it all the time but during your times of the imac with the fan problem, run it.
 
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iRye
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iCyclone doesn't work with the iMac at this juncture, but SMC FanControl does. It doesn't seem to do anything
 
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iRye
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Thanks for the suggestion, Blizare.


I hate to dig up and old thread, but I wanted to update you all on my situation.

I had the iMac repaired, and after a week, it came back. It had a front bezel replacement due to iSight and microphone issues, and a missing screw that has been missing since I opened the machine.


The fan issues are no longer existing. I have the iMac located down in the basement in a place that's about 17˚C and it's acting as a semi-decent server. When the warranty expires, I'm thinking a G4 will go in it's place. Decent server with lots room to grow with HDDs. As much as I'd love a ridiculously awesome XServe with Xeons, I'm not a millionaire.

it's pretty quiet now. They fixed the misbalanced optical drive that caused a bunch of buzzing whenever a disk was spinning and accessing. That returned in about 3 days.

I'm gonna take it back to my room and start using it, it's lonely. Sitting in a cold basement not being used much. Only processing file commands, not processing home movies or photos or browsing mac-forums. I obviously need to see an iPsychologist. (have you heard of the new iPsych 3G?)

Anyways, it's working good enough. :)
 

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