Should I buy a new iMac or fix it?

I have a 4.5 year old iMac 10.4.11 that needs a new logic board. Should I pay $680 to fix it or $2000 for a new one.

And I hope I can transfer Photoshop to the new computer. Photoshop is registered to my computer.

I appreciate your opinion

In my opinion, a 4 1/2 year old machine is not worth spending $680 to repair. All you would be doing is repairing old technology. And, you can buy a new iMac for less than $2000.... ;D

Regards.

Thank you for your reply. ))

What exactly is wrong with the logic board?

I really don't know. The Apple store told me it's the logic board. I can only use my computer for a little while and then I get the little rotating ball of death icon. Then I have to unplug it cuz the computer stops responding.

It sucks cuz I like my computer. It's either shelling out $680 for fixing or $2000 for a new computer.

That doesn't sound very much like a logic board problem. Does it completely seize up or does the beach ball just spin indefinitely? Have you tried force quitting any applications?

Most of the time the beach ball keeps spinning. Sometimes it turns into the normal arrow...but it becomes completely useless since the computer doesn't respond at all to any clicks.

Force quit doesn't respond at all...including when I use the keyboard to force click. I'm just glad that it works right now...but it doesn't work for extended periods.

Try eBay for cheaper logic boards and install it yourself.

Re your Photoshop query. If you reinstall your Photoshop on a new Mac and it's CS, no problem. If it's CS2, 3 or 4 you will have lost one of your two activations. If you have previously used one, or have it also installed on another computer, you will need to speak to Adobe and explain your computer failed and you can't transfer the activation, they will give you another. Even if you pulled the hard drive from the old mac and migrated it into the newer mac, any Photoshop that requires activation would fail. If your Mac problem was the logic board and you had it replaced, the mac's S/N would be blown into it via Apples proprietary BBS software so Photoshop would still run. If you bought the right logic board off eBay I doubt you could obtain the software to do this. Would you replace an expensive logic board with only a 90 day warranty?

Really does not sound like a board, there are 2 situations that would propose this issue, that I have noticed.(1) Be sure that your your HD is not full, if you are running low things will slow quite a bit, bringing things to a stop and non responsive mouse actions. Quick way to check would be to (x)2 click on the HD image on your desktop, at the bottom of the window you find available space. (2) Check in utilities/ system profiler/ memory and be sure that the RAM is reading okay. I would use a process of elimination starting with the less expensive repair, if drive has space and RAM reads okay, remove and re seat the RAM. If all else fails you can try the most frequently used methods such as SMC reset and our beloved PRAM ZAP;-)

powermac G5 said:

Really does not sound like a board, there are 2 situations that would propose this issue, that I have noticed.(1) Be sure that your your HD is not full, if you are running low things will slow quite a bit, bringing things to a stop and non responsive mouse actions. Quick way to check would be to (x)2 click on the HD image on your desktop, at the bottom of the window you find available space. (2) Check in utilities/ system profiler/ memory and be sure that the RAM is reading okay. I would use a process of elimination starting with the less expensive repair, if drive has space and RAM reads okay, remove and re seat the RAM. If all else fails you can try the most frequently used methods such as SMC reset and our beloved PRAM ZAP;-)

Click to expand...

This is really interesting because when it gets really bad, I have to click very slowly. A few quick clicks and the computer freezes with the beach ball rotating forever. I don't know much about computers, but here's the info:

The HD window says 179.11 GB available (out of 250 GB). It reads OK for both RAM chips (1 GB and 512 MB). One oddity is that somehow, my documents folder is on my desktop. There's a documents folder in the HD, but when I try and open a document using photoshop from the documents folder in the HD, it doesn't work. I can only open it from the documents folder in the desktop. I don't know if this is related to the problem...but I just removed a bunch of photos from the documents folder in the desktop in case this is taking up too much RAM.

Confusing...