life span of mac?

Posted:
in General Discussion edited January 2014
read from another forum that life span of a mac harddisk is 2 years,

that's scary, my PC working for 5 years and still working, except the CRT.

can anyone post the age of your mac and parts?

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 20
    jesperasjesperas Posts: 524member
    The same hard drives that are in PCs (IBM, Seagate, Quantum, Maxtor, Western Digital) are used or can be used in Macs. Recently, some Mac models with IBM Deskstar 75GXP hard drives have had problems with drive failures...but so did the PCs that had them. This was a problem with IBM's cr@ppy drive, not Macs. The 80MB (yes, MB) SCSI drive in the Macintosh LC 475 I bought in college 8 years ago is still going strong, and still being used at my folks' place for word processing.
  • Reply 2 of 20
    emaneman Posts: 7,204member
    If anything Macs will last longer than PCs.
  • Reply 3 of 20
    ipadipad Posts: 18member
    Well hard drives are hard drives, it's not really a matter of the computer itself if your hard drive dies (unless you..well, set fire to it purposely and expected it to relinquish the flames by itself).



    The Deskstar 75GXP (i have one), has probably the highest breakdown rate (of modern hard drives, i don't know about previous ones, and the 75GXP itself is fairly old now, replaced by the 60GXP, and now the 120GXP). This is why IBM is currently being faced with a class action lawsuit on it.
  • Reply 4 of 20
    majukimajuki Posts: 114member
    On average, the lifespan of a mac is four years as compared to the average lifespan of a pc is two years. Macs tend to hold their resale value longer, and infrequent updates make people feel as though they don't need to upgrade as often.



    As for the 75GXP, I had three of them originally. I've sold two, and I'm planning to sell the third. Unfortunately, it's my startup drive for OS X, so I'm waiting for 10.2, when I'm forced to upgrade anyway before I mess with it. 8)



    The reason the 75GXP has such a high fail rate is because it uses glass platters. (Regular hard drives use metal platters.) Using glass platters allowed IBM to create the first 75GB ATA drive. I believe the next drive down was the 40GXP when the 75GXP came out and the 60GXP was released later. Anyway, the 75GXP was the only model that ever made use of the glass platter. As you know, glass tends to be fragile, so you can see the problem.
  • Reply 5 of 20
    sithsith Posts: 25member
    [quote]Originally posted by Majuki:

    <strong>As for the 75GXP, I had three of them originally. I've sold two, and I'm planning to sell the third. Unfortunately, it's my startup drive for OS X, so I'm waiting for 10.2, when I'm forced to upgrade anyway before I mess with it. 8)

    </strong><hr></blockquote>



    Hmm, I bought a 75GXP (75gb) right as they came out. I've been through 5 replacements since then (under two years) ... finally gave up and bought another brand for the computer that had the 75gxp ... a craptacular drive..
  • Reply 6 of 20
    mac writemac write Posts: 289member
    II bought my compute ron Wednesday June 3 11AM, 1998. It is a Beige G3 MT
    • 266mhz

    • 512KB L2 cache

    • 66mhz bus

    • ATI Radeon 32MB DDR (Original)

    • Internal SCSI Zip drive

    • 416MB RAM (768MB by end of the year)

    • 60GB Maxtor 7200RPM

    • 24x Sony CD-ROM (a bit temermental sometimes slow to read a CD/noisy)

    • Personality card A/V (love the RCA out)

    • OrangeMicro USB/Firewire PCI

    • Microsoft Intellimouse Optical

    • Yamaha firewire 16x10x40x CDRW (1 too many "?" of death thank god I challenaged and won)

    • Epson Stylus Color 740

    • Palm III (wating for replacemnet last one dead)

    • Mac OS 10.1.4 5Q125 (full time)

    Now the earliest I will be getting a new computer and I mean the earliest is July 2003, but most likely Jan/July 2004.



    I will only be buying the entry level model all I can afford, and here are the min specs
    • PowerMac G5

    • SuperDrive (easier for backing up 10GB in Apple keynotes)

    • 2ghz G5

    • 512MB Signel dimm

    • 100GB hardrive

    • 8x AGP with the latest Radeon (Better Quicktime hardware excelleration)

    • Internal firewire ?

    have I missed anything? it need to last 5-6 years worse case senerio.



    [ 05-11-2002: Message edited by: Mac Write ]</p>
  • Reply 7 of 20
    applenutapplenut Posts: 5,768member
    we have Apple IIes still being used in my mother's school for the secretaries (they don't want to give them up for new imacs, they say the apple IIes do the job fine)



    we also have dozens of LCIIs and old Performa running flawlessly.



    I have a Performa 6360 which runs 24/7 almost all the time and performs without a problem.
  • Reply 8 of 20
    [quote]Originally posted by EmAn:

    <strong>If anything Macs will last longer than PCs.</strong><hr></blockquote>



    Unless you bought a Rev A iMac and the analog board blew out and Apple refused to fix it because it was one month out of warranty and they couldn't admit it was a defect.



    Then there's my Rev C iMac that needed a new logic board after just two years.



    The quality of Macs is no where near what it used to be.
  • Reply 9 of 20
    applenutapplenut Posts: 5,768member
    [quote]Originally posted by scott_h_phd:

    <strong>



    Unless you bought a Rev A iMac and the analog board blew out and Apple refused to fix it because it was one month out of warranty and they couldn't admit it was a defect.



    Then there's my Rev C iMac that needed a new logic board after just two years.



    The quality of Macs is no where near what it used to be.</strong><hr></blockquote>



    that is definitely true, at least in the case of CRT imacs. they really have a high failure rate. the district office here is always packed with iMacs with blown analog boards or screwed up CRTs or messed up optical drives
  • Reply 10 of 20
    matsumatsu Posts: 6,558member
    I wonder if eMac will be any better.
  • Reply 11 of 20
    [quote]Originally posted by applenut:

    <strong>



    that is definitely true, at least in the case of CRT imacs. they really have a high failure rate. the district office here is always packed with iMacs with blown analog boards or screwed up CRTs or messed up optical drives</strong><hr></blockquote>



    *Still praying mine holds together*
  • Reply 12 of 20
    emaneman Posts: 7,204member
    [quote]Originally posted by scott_h_phd:

    <strong>



    Unless you bought a Rev A iMac and the analog board blew out and Apple refused to fix it because it was one month out of warranty and they couldn't admit it was a defect.



    Then there's my Rev C iMac that needed a new logic board after just two years.



    The quality of Macs is no where near what it used to be.</strong><hr></blockquote>



    Well I don't know but my Rev C iMac is still humming along fine and so is my dad's Rev D.
  • Reply 13 of 20
    scott2scott2 Posts: 39member
    From personal experience I totally agree that CRT macs do have a quality problem.



    I have seen the same thing in other industries as well: having a consumer product line with high volumes, thin profit margins and consequently lower quality assurance standards, versus a professional product line that can really deliver under much heavier loads.



    As an example, when I bought a UPS all of the sales people steered me clear of getting three personal models versus one professional one (for a lesser total price), all of them citing the QA factor.
  • Reply 14 of 20
    majormattmajormatt Posts: 1,077member
    Although the revA problems is unexcusable, it just another reason why I dont buy version 1.0 products.



    In response to the question: I expect a Mac to last a good 5-7 years.



    In response to Macs not lasting as long: In the days of yore (Mac 128k, Apple ][s) Back then those motherboards were basically simple one layer sides. Today, a G4 motherboard has 14 layers! In addition, the components are no longer simple DIP chips, rather small SOIC Chips, miniscule resistors, miniscule everything, basically. These boards are many times the complexity of the older boards, and with complexity brings a greater chance of breaking down.
  • Reply 15 of 20
    defiantdefiant Posts: 4,876member
    [quote]Originally posted by Mac Write:

    <strong>Internal firewire ?</strong><hr></blockquote>



    This has already been here.

    My PowerMac G4 AGP has one internal FireWire port.

    It's pretty cool ! :cool:
  • Reply 16 of 20
    mac writemac write Posts: 289member
    [quote]Originally posted by Defiant:

    <strong>



    This has already been here.

    My PowerMac G4 AGP has one internal FireWire port.

    It's pretty cool ! :cool: </strong><hr></blockquote>



    Apple took out the Internal Firewire port in the QWuickSilver G4's. So I hope when I get the G5 second revision, it has an internal firewire port.



    Also I have a Rev A Beige G3 MT and am thanking the lord I didn't get a Rev B. Sure it has a Rage Pro with 6MB RAM, but it also only have a IDE Zip drive, with isn't bootable. I have an Internal SCSI Zip drive that is bootable.
  • Reply 17 of 20
    lucaluca Posts: 3,833member
    Let's see... I recently got a 1986 SE with a 800k floppy and a 20 MB internal hard drive, and the hard drive died when I tried to reformat it. Then again, it is sixteen years old, and it worked before the reformat. I just use two floppies (I have an external one also) for it.



    My brother has a Rev. B iMac, and it works perfectly except for the CD drive. It roars with some discs, works quietly with very few discs, works only if he starts the CD spinning before putting it in the computer on some discs, and occasionally doesn't work at all. He uses a CD burner whose burning software has gone kaput as his CD drive, and it's much more reliable.



    The other computers in my house (four year old Wallstreet PB, three year old B&W G3, brand new TiBook 550/Combo, nine year old Performa 630CD) have shown no problems with any of their hard drives, but one of the USB ports on the B&W G3 is a bit flaky. Also, the computers that I've recently gotten rid of (8100/100, 7100/80, 7100/66, 7200/120) were all working great when they were sold or given away (all within the last year).



    [ 05-13-2002: Message edited by: Luca Rescigno ]</p>
  • Reply 18 of 20
    crusadercrusader Posts: 1,129member
    My CDROM on my good'ol Rev. A has crapped out, but other than that my iMac is fine. I also have a old 636 Performa that works flawlessly except for the PRAM battary, and I have a Classic II that performs 24/7.
  • Reply 19 of 20
    aslanaslan Posts: 97member
    I still have a PM 7500 and a Beige G3 minitower (artemis) @ 333 MHz (top model at the time). i am still using MacOS 9 on these though.



    Though I would concur with the "Never buy version 1.0 of products from Apple" bit. This is true of other companies also I suppose, but Apple has history of being particularly bad.



    E.g.: Powerbook 5300ce. Made a nice egg skillet. Sucked major ass as a powerbook.



    I was stupid enough to buy one. (Thankfully, Apple realized their mistake several years later and offered me a deal to get a 400 MHz Pismo for $700. THAT made me happy and much more loyal than I was before! )
  • Reply 20 of 20
    resres Posts: 711member
    I gave my quadra 650 away to a friend aboout 3 years ago. She passed it on to one of her friends about a year ago, and last I heard it was still working fine. That computer is only around 8 years old -- my father is still using our Apple ][e which came out in 1983 :eek:
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