How long can last an iMac?

[aliensporebomb]

Lifespans

My wife's original iMac DV SE is now on its third owner - 8-9 years old?

My original PowerMac G4/400 Sawtooth is sitting in the basement but can be fired up at any need and works fine (but slow). Also 8-9 years old.

The wife also had one of the 600 mhz G3 iMacs which got sent to her sister - after she got done with that it went to someone else (7 years?) and they ended up getting a core2duo iMac 21.5".

My father in-law had one of the original BondiBlue iMacs and that one went to a friend of mine 5-6 years ago. Still works.

My wife's old lamp style 1.25 ghz G4 iMac with the 17" screen is in the hands of friends which they use to play DVDs and that's 6-7 years old now too.

My PowerMac G5 2.5 is still working five years later even after the liquid cooling leaked (repaired under Applecare) and a power transformer explosion in our neighborhood compromised the way it works but it still runs.

They're pretty robust machines.

 

[billyturtle]

My 17" iMac G4 800 circa Christmas 2002 is still going pretty strong.

My brand new 21.5" 3.06 iMac blows it away though.

All I need to do to get the G4 back into tip top shape is wipe the drive and reinstall. It's got some disk issues. It happened to me every time I tried to play around with video editing on the G4. As soon as I do that it'll be as good as new. I might look into maxing out the memory when I reinstall. Is changing the factory memory a big deal?

 

[wjlafrance]

Oh, come on!!! Many G5 had died already. There are better Macs but there are ones that are just average. What we also shouldn't forget is that Apple Inc is using the same parts as other PC manufacturers. What makes you think that the same parts in a MacBook Pro will last longer than in a Toshiba or Sony Vaio?

I'll admit that there are lemons out there, but I'm going to take a stab in the dark and say that Toshiba and Sony don't use server-grade hard drives (Hitachi Deskstar is has sever class mean-time-to-failure, even though they're not marketed as such). Apple certifies their RAM to perform much better than most RAM out there (and consequently, much more expensive).

When people talk about Apple's price, I refer them to a Lenovo ThinkPad. I have an IBM ThinkPad 600 which still chugs along with Windows XP after 13 years.

 

[meb91]

Computers usually last longer than you need them to. Meaning, they'll still work fine for many years after they're obsolete and you've moved on to something faster and more updated.

I have an old eMachines with a 366 MHz Cyrix CPU from 1999, and a Dell with a 1.8 GHz Celeron from 2003. Both have all original parts (yes, including the HDD!) and still work fine, but these machines are pretty useless these days.

 

[SuperPathy]

And I'm typing this on my (exactly) 5 year old 20", 2.0GHz G5 iMac. I have had zero problems with this machine and have used it heavily. The only thing I did was max out the RAM a few years ago to get a bit more performance. I just wish Snow Leopard supported the G5's, but it doesn't so I just ordered a 27" Quad Core i5. Can't wait! I just hope I get a good one!

 

[GyroFX]

And I'm typing this on my (exactly) 5 year old 20", 2.0GHz G5 iMac. I have had zero problems with this machine and have used it heavily. The only thing I did was max out the RAM a few years ago to get a bit more performance. I just wish Snow Leopard supported the G5's, but it doesn't so I just ordered a 27" Quad Core i5. Can't wait! I just hope I get a good one!

yes, my almost 5 yr old G5 Quad is still running. If it wasn't for some thermal runaway problem where I had to set the CPU to reduced, i would have never gotten my 27" i5 a couple of days ago.

 

[TyWahn]

Just replaced my 17" 1 GHZ G4. (2003)
It's now the kids' computer... still going, a bit slowly, but going ....