[p2b4f]

Now that I have your attention...

Suppose the company I work for has an end-of-life policy on iMacs that basically says if it fails before the New Year, it gets replaced with an awesome new, top-of-the-line Mac from an enterprise-level pool of money. Otherwise, your department has to foot the cost of the bill for the new Mac.

Now, suppose I could probably get along fine with this old iMac for testing purposes, but also suppose I could really make more money for the company if I had a newer one to match the kind of dev specs for writing iPhone apps and such that I'd really need.

Suppose I can't make a solid business case for department-appropriated money because of some neanderthal luddites in my way who recently and inexplicably and illogically decided to ELIMINATE all hardware budgets for 2010. ("You want to do what with the whoseit and the hulahoops? No! That's crazy talk! We need that money for schmoozing clients at expensive restaurants and jetting to conferences.").

Suppose I want my Mac to just "wear out" in a way that is non-destructive but makes a clear business case for replacing it from that enterprise pool of money in the sky. After all, I still need a Mac for testing.

What would need to happen? Run SETI@Home at full bore night and day to reach mean time between failure? Know what I mean? *nudge nudge*

[turtle777]

Depends on how smart your IT department is in checking the Mac for issues.

Bad RAM can do "wonders" in terms of making the machine unreliable.

-t

[p2b4f]

Hmm. "Bad RAM". Do tell. How might a person allegedly go about making one's RAM go or appear "bad" without being dishonest or overtly destructive? My integrity (and losing my job) is not worth the price of a Mac, you see, so it is imperative that an autopsy be seen as not necessary given apparent cause of demise.

[CharlesS]

Wouldn’t doing something like this constitute fraud?

[p2b4f]

Fraud: Only if there wasn't anything wrong with the machine and I said there was, or if I did something to it to make it broken. Ultimately, if nothing is wrong with it, I'm resigned to be stuck with it. BTW, I'm not really being as sneaky as my message implies. The man at the top who controls the flow of new to old replacements gave me his permission to make a case for replacement based on anything I might find wrong with it. His call.

What's the best way to test the RAM on a Mac to probe it for flaws? What about the hard drive or motherboard, or other components? That's the route I'm really looking into.

[turtle777]

Originally Posted by p2b4f 

Now, suppose I could probably get along fine with this old iMac for testing purposes, but also suppose I could really make more money for the company if I had a newer one to match the kind of dev specs for writing iPhone apps and such that I'd really need.

Why don't you put together an quick calculation that shows how much more productive you could be with a new machine.

If it saves you 1 hr per week, x 52, x your hourly rate, this should easily pay for a new computer.

-t

[CharlesS]

Originally Posted by p2b4f 

Fraud: Only if there wasn't anything wrong with the machine and I said there was, or if I did something to it to make it broken.

Your original post seemed to suggest that you were looking for the latter, which certainly is something I wouldn’t recommend.

If you are just looking for something that’s already broken, if it’s got an NVidia card, those tend to be pretty flaky. Do a bunch of intensive 3D stuff (oddly enough, the “flip” animation that Front Row’s music player does is a good way to trigger this) and you might get a bunch of weirdness followed by a long string of errors in the Console. My MBP went through three motherboard replacements and one full unit swap before I finally got the GPU to work right.

[p2b4f]

Your original post seemed to suggest that you were looking for the latter, which certainly is something I wouldn’t recommend.

Sorry. Not my intent. Had hoped my later replies would have clarified, but running on empty mentally this morning. LOL

I like your suggestion about testing for flaws in the video card. Will give that a shot. Thanks all for the ideas!