imac relability...

alright i have a question. I have a imac g5 that i recently purchased. I see that a lot of people here copy dvds etc... i was wondering if ripping dvds and that type of stuff is bad for the imac especially the harddrive and dvd drive. I was wondering because on my pc i used to do alot of dvd ripping and stuff that is related to that and i remember people saying that it was bad because it was hard on the hardware. Also when i used to do dvd ripping on my pc i had two harddrives die on me. I was just wondering before i keep on doing these things if there is any danger for premature failure due to excessive processing of dvds etc... I bought the imac because i need something reliable and pc computers wren't doing it for me. I don't want to do stupid stuff if will mean the death of my imac. Please give me some advice i greatly appreciate it. Thanks in adance.

Uh... a DVD burner is intended just for that, burning DVD's, so I don't see why not.

The more you use the computer the faster it will wear out but Macs are good quality so it should be able to handle it. I've never worn out a Mac and I use mine on a day to day basis. I'd usually get to the point that I'd want to replace it for a newer one.

However, this forum is full of stories of harddrive failures and other problems, do a search for DVD failure. They don't seem to be so prominent.

Heck, if you use your toaster too much you could burn it out. Things like that happen. As long as you are using a machine for its intended purpose, then you are fine. If it craps out, then it craps out... there really is no way to predict if and when that might happen.

Bottom line is that DVD_CDROMS were meant to be used as were hard drives. As a past system designer there 3 rules about both ----

- they like to be either mounted horizontally or vertically ( with at most a few degrees of deviation from either position)

- they need to have decent ventilation for heat dissapation (don't block venting grills / holes)

- they don't like to be dropped (anytime) or bumped while spinning


Follow those rules and burn-baby-burn ------ also use quality media