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How Reliable is your Mac??

R

rstorm

macrumors regular
Oct 26, 2006
135
0
Grand Rapids, MI
All Intel Mac's I have at the office have been rock solid. Only issue is with Quark and Suitcase.

15" MBP 2.0 CD
15" MBP 2.13 C2D

My G4 is still going strong but I am jealous when I do have to do minor maintenance. April can not come quick enough for me!
 
S

Schnebar

macrumors 6502
May 15, 2006
372
1
California
My Intel iMac crashes some programs alot. But never all at once.

I think it is just rosetta problems because all that crashes is word (bad program to randomly crash) and Netscape under rosetta running shockwave games because it is not universal yett. (as far as i know)

But I guess firefox crashes some times too and that is native.

But It is never that big of a deal because just the program quits
 
ppnkg

ppnkg

macrumors 6502a
Jul 29, 2005
510
6
UK
My iMac has crashed just three times since I bought it in August 2005. I can recall the exact number because these were such exceptional events. Two times Word crashed, and the other was a kernel panic at startup, if I remember correctly.

So practically speaking I never had any problems with my imac. It works, and, very minor issues apart, which are likely to be corrected with OS updates, it works exactly the way I want it to work.

I am very much aware that serious concerns may occur and are always likely to occur with computers, just as with any machine, but I think the best approach to them would be to just call Apple as soon as you detect the problem.
 
I

ironic23

macrumors 6502
Feb 8, 2006
263
0
my MBP core duo hasnt been the most reliable. the screen buzzes just like a fuzzy tv at times and most times it doesnt output the video signal to my 23" ACD. on top of that, it gets extremely hot and has the buzzing sound. USB ports dont work at times. i think apple hardware has declined in quality so far, contrary to fortune's report.
 
A

APPLENEWBIE

macrumors 6502a
May 8, 2006
707
14
The high desert, USA
mac mini g4: bullet proof
G3 powermac 400: bullet proof
g4 ibook 1.33: bullet proof
macbook 1.83: bullet proof (more or less)
imac intel c2d: was a bit hinky after I bought/installed some centon ram 512mb. Computer got really unreliable until I took it out. Replaced it with pny ram. Now imac is bulletproof.

One reason I switched to mac was the unbelievable reliability problems I experienced on 4 windows machines. Since i switched to mac... life is good.
 
V

volk

macrumors member
Oct 2, 2006
56
0
My Mac experience has been excellent over the years. So far I have owned a Performa 5300, PowerMac G3, and a 24" iMac.

The breakdown:

1. Performa 5300 is going on 12 years old. During that time, the only repair needed was when it was brand new. The monitor that shipped with it from Apple was damaged and lost it's red output. Once that was fixed, no issues at all with hardware of any kind. System 7.5 had some moments of unreliability, but once I moved to system 8, the machine has been virtually bulletproof. My Dad still uses this machine daily for all his invoice and billing needs for his business.

2. PowerMac G3 266 beige. A very fast computer in it's day, and very capable. This was my learning machine and experienced a ton of dabbling hardware wise. I swapped out hard drives, added internal SCSI CD-RW, maxed the RAM, created a slave HD setup, and added an internal ATI card. The only failure this machine experienced was a bad IDE cable (my fault) that would sometimes cause the drive not to be recognized on boot. This machine still runs great, but was replaced because the cost of upgrading it any further was greater than getting a newer machine. It was also very marginal for handling OS X.

3. iMac 24". In some respects, this machine has been the most reliable and the most unreliable Mac I have owned all at once. OS X has been a rock. I have experienced two application quits, none of which have brought down the OS, and have had only one issue that "hung" the OS, but it was while using Chicken of the VNC and experiencing a power failure. A reboot cured it. On the hardware front, everything is very solid, but there are a few quibbles. I can hear the dreaded screen whine and have a fan that seems to vibrate excessively. On occassion my Mac will sleep the screen and not the entire system, but it's pretty rare. Overall, I love this machine.

I wish my Windows XP box at work would be this reliable. Any change with USB devices will either kernal panic the computer, force a reboot, or reset my keyboard repeat settings. I have lost a drive, and had 3 power supply replacements. Overall, it's about on the average with every other Windows experience I have had.

The Mac isn't perfect, but it has been light years better than anything I have had on the PC side.
 
queshy

queshy

macrumors 68040
Apr 2, 2005
3,690
4
24" iMac pretty reliable...MSN has crashed 2 or 3 times, but I suspect it's because of buggy software...and when it crashes, it relaunches instantly, and my other stuff is unaffected.
 
queshy

queshy

macrumors 68040
Apr 2, 2005
3,690
4
volk said:
My Mac experience has been excellent over the years. So far I have owned a Performa 5300, PowerMac G3, and a 24" iMac.

The breakdown:

1. Performa 5300 is going on 12 years old. During that time, the only repair needed was when it was brand new. The monitor that shipped with it from Apple was damaged and lost it's red output. Once that was fixed, no issues at all with hardware of any kind. System 7.5 had some moments of unreliability, but once I moved to system 8, the machine has been virtually bulletproof. My Dad still uses this machine daily for all his invoice and billing needs for his business.

2. PowerMac G3 266 beige. A very fast computer in it's day, and very capable. This was my learning machine and experienced a ton of dabbling hardware wise. I swapped out hard drives, added internal SCSI CD-RW, maxed the RAM, created a slave HD setup, and added an internal ATI card. The only failure this machine experienced was a bad IDE cable (my fault) that would sometimes cause the drive not to be recognized on boot. This machine still runs great, but was replaced because the cost of upgrading it any further was greater than getting a newer machine. It was also very marginal for handling OS X.

3. iMac 24". In some respects, this machine has been the most reliable and the most unreliable Mac I have owned all at once. OS X has been a rock. I have experienced two application quits, none of which have brought down the OS, and have had only one issue that "hung" the OS, but it was while using Chicken of the VNC and experiencing a power failure. A reboot cured it. On the hardware front, everything is very solid, but there are a few quibbles. I can hear the dreaded screen whine and have a fan that seems to vibrate excessively. On occassion my Mac will sleep the screen and not the entire system, but it's pretty rare. Overall, I love this machine.

I wish my Windows XP box at work would be this reliable. Any change with USB devices will either kernal panic the computer, force a reboot, or reset my keyboard repeat settings. I have lost a drive, and had 3 power supply replacements. Overall, it's about on the average with every other Windows experience I have had.

The Mac isn't perfect, but it has been light years better than anything I have had on the PC side.
Click to expand...

Sorry for the double post, but I dont know how to edit a post by with a quote. Do you only have the screen whine on lower brightness levels? And how loud are the fans? I really dont know how quiet the iMac should be. Out of 5 iMacs, I have yet to have a "completely silent" one as some users put it. I think it's very subjective..it may seems silent to one person but loud to another.
 
cwedl

cwedl

macrumors 65816
Jun 5, 2003
1,407
32
99.9% up time - 0.01% used to restart computer computer after updates
 
V

volk

macrumors member
Oct 2, 2006
56
0
queshy said:
Sorry for the double post, but I dont know how to edit a post by with a quote. Do you only have the screen whine on lower brightness levels? And how loud are the fans? I really dont know how quiet the iMac should be. Out of 5 iMacs, I have yet to have a "completely silent" one as some users put it. I think it's very subjective..it may seems silent to one person but loud to another.
Click to expand...


I notice the whine at all times, but I don't run the screen at full brightness. The fan issue is a little different...it is somewhat eratic. Mostly it just seems that one of the fans is causing some vibration. That vibration seems louder than anything else.

As to how loud it is, I can only tell you that I hear it and my wife doesn't. She can hear it at times, but considers it completely unobtrusive. I work with audio all day at work, so I really notice it. Even at that, it is still only a minor quible...it's not like a PC box with fans roaring away under the desk or anything. If the tv is on or something else is going on at all, it disappears into the background completely.
 
Sesshi

Sesshi

macrumors G3
Jun 3, 2006
8,113
1
One Nation Under Gordon
I drafted quite a long reply to this, but Textedit is now beachballing. This is a MBP with a less than week-old OS X installation.

That just about sums it up really.
 
spicyapple

spicyapple

macrumors 68000
Jul 20, 2006
1,724
1
My mac has been rock solid for as long as I can remember.

I did have to replace the Superdrive at one point, but other than that, even with an internal SATA RAID, non-Apple RAM and USB peripherals out the wazoo, it's been quite the workhorse for me.
 
aafuss1

aafuss1

macrumors 68000
May 5, 2002
1,598
2
Gold Coast, Australia
My Mac mini (1.5GHz Core Solo) is extremely reliable-the only problem I've had with it was the audio board which was replaced under warranty, other than that it's been stable.
 
D

dhc

macrumors regular
Jan 10, 2006
168
0
UK
Coincidentally, I was just discussing with my wife that no matter how fast and powerful my 1.83 CD MBP is, my Rev A :)eek:) G5 iMac was noticeably more stable. It's not like the MBP is hideously problematic, but the benchmark was set high by the G5, and it shows. I'm shortly going to be buying a 20" intel iMac, and hope to get close to the PPC's stability.

The better half's got a final revision iBook which is solid, and I've offered to buy her a C2D Macbook, but she's a little discouraged by the 'quirks' of my intel machine, and not at all convinced. :(
 
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