[Walker]

Like most people here at the MacNN forums, I am a mac purist. Like a lot of other people who buy into the cult of the mac, not only do I love my mac, but I want everyone around me to love their macs as well.

I personally own a quicksilver & a titanium powerbook (about to add a 12 inch aluminum). My wife has a trusty clamshell ibook, my 17 yr old daughter a 1.6 G5, my 15 yr old daughter an eMac, and my 13 yr old son a 1.2 gh upgraded AGP G4 tower. In addition I've given my old G4 upgraded B/W to my brother, a CRT iMac to my Aunt, and finally, I bought my mom a flat panel iMac 700 mh not long after they first came out. It is this iMac of my Mom's that is making me lose my mind.

For the most part, my mom's iMac ran great during it 's first 1 1/2 years of existence. Then it all went downhill last month. My mom and my stepdad decided to plunge into the world of high speed internet. I enthusiastically supported this as I'm going to be living in Australia for the year 2005, and I wanted to be able to video conference with her while I'm "down under." So they had the internet providers come and install a DSL high speed connection. The installer was totally mac ignorant, and was unable to get my mom's iMac connected to the internet. I live 3 hours away, but came back the following weekend to see if I could get it working. I found that the internet installer had used a netgear wired/wireless router to make his connection to the computers. My stepdads computer is an OLD archaic IBM and the internet installer installed a netgear card and this connection was working great. However, the wireless connection with the iMac wasn't working. This was, of course, because the iMac didn't have an airport card present. Now while I think the internet installer was an idiot because he didn't know anything about the airport card, I will give him credit because he took the time to install an ethernet cable from the netgear router to the iMac via a terribly constricted crawl space under the house.

Well, to my dismay, even with the ethernet cable plugged into the iMac, I still couldn't connect to the internet. I tried a million different trouble shooting ideas, but I couldn't get the damn computer to give up anything besides a 169.xxx.xxxx. address. I spend the weekend trying to get it to work, and resort to bringing the computer home with me as I run out of time and have to be back to work in Monday.

Tuesday afternoon I bring the computer to my Mac store in Sioux Falls, SD. Lo and behold, bad ethernet port. Yes, my mother did not purchase Applecare. And how do we fix a bad ethernet port on an iMac? Complete motherboard replacement...$400. Hell, the iMac was probably only worth $650. So we take the next best course. I purchase a $80 airport card. I bring her computer back to my house and it connects flawlessly to my airport base station. So I head back over to my Moms, another 3 hour drive and I get there at 1 am. I plug in her computer.....and the airport card fails to recognize the netgear router. After a couple of hours of troubleshooting, firmware updates for the router (via that damn IBM), and a lot of cussing & swearing, I finally get a connection. I feel total relief, and hit the couch for a couple hours of sleep before I head back home.

The next morning....no connection. I try everything. Every once-in-a-while, I get a spotty connection (always a strong signal....but not a connection to internet). Talk about frustrated. I am forced to come back home totally demoralized.

After a few days, I grab my laptop from work. It just so happens that at work I use the EXACT SAME netgear wireless router, and my laptop has never had a problem connecting to it. I bring my laptop to Mom's house. Guess what. Terrible connection. So there must be something wrong with the netgear router. But by now I'm so fed up, I could care less about the money for the new motherboard. So I haul my mom's computer to the mac techs and have the motherboard replaced. On the Sunday before Thanksgiving I bring Mom's computer to her home. Plug it into the ethernet cable, and.....IT WORKS! Thank you Dear Jesus the damn computer works. Her DSL internet connection is flying, with upload speeds in the mid-200's, perfect for video conferencing. I give my mom a kiss, and tell her that I'll see her for thanksgiving (which also happens to be her birthday, with which I'm giving her a new iSight).

So Wednesday night the family & I head to Mom's for Thanksgiving/her birthday on Thursday. We get there and she is raving about how great her computer works and how nice it is to have the high speed internet connection. She is thrilled when she opens her present and sees the new iSight camera. That afternoon I hook up the camera. It works right out of the box. Unfortunately I have don't know anyone to test the iChat with, so I tell her that when I get back to my house that night, we'll give it a try.

We spend a few more hours at Mom's house before we head back. The kids are playing games on her computer. A strange thing happens. Her iMac crashes. I mean it locks up solid requiring a hard restart. One thing her computer has always been is stable. I dismiss this as a one time occurrence. After her computer restarts, I repair disk permissions and the family & I head off back home. 3 hours later, I give her a call and say, "lets try out this iChat." She says, "My computer has crashed several times after you left. The screen has lines vertical lines running through it and the cursor turns different colors." Talk about being exasperated. I try to have her run disk permissions. It keeps locking up requiring hard restarts. I have her unplug everything from the USB/firewire ports. I guide her through restarting off of the panther install disk and running disk repair. She also zaps Pram. Sometimes when she restarts, the lines across the screen are barely noticeable. Other times they are very bright. Always after a few minutes the computer crashes hard.

And to make this even better, throughout this entire experience my stepfather keeps saying things like, "I thought Macs were so good," and, "if you had a real computer like my IBM this wouldn't be a problem." Also, he's the idiot that threw away the box so I can't ship the computer any more.

Now I'm back to square one. On Sunday I'll head back and get the computer. I'll troubleshoot and will more than likely take it back to the computer shop. Who knows, maybe Mom will end up with a new iMac over this.

Down and out in South Dakota. But for some strange reason.....still a mac lover.

lw

[demograph68]

I've heard worse and can only wonder why it has never happened to me.

[gautch]

After all this trouble with your interenet connecting... and its all after 1 year and a half of owning this iMac.... you should be happy. I work on a mac.. and have had NO problems. My GF has a PC at home.. and we have had to reinestall (F-Disk and all) 3 times in the last year. We lost everything (all 3 times).

So you should count your lucky stars.. .

[Cody Dawg]

That story reminds me of two incidences with our son's eMac:

First time it was a bad evad cable inside that caused weird lines.

Second time it was a bad airport card.

It definitely sounds like a video board/evad issue.

Sorry to hear about your trouble!

But, it makes me realize that AppleCare is well worth the $$$.

Moral of your story, methinks?

BUY APPLECARE.

Good luck, tho!

[hayesk]

The iMac had a bad motherboard all 'round, it sounds like, not just the ethernet port.

I hate it when someone says "I thought Macs were good" after an experience like this. Just say "they are the best, but nobody's perfect. Sorry for your bad luck."

[DeathToWindows]

Originally posted by hayesk:
The iMac had a bad motherboard all 'round, it sounds like, not just the ethernet port.

I hate it when someone says "I thought Macs were good" after an experience like this. Just say "they are the best, but nobody's perfect. Sorry for your bad luck."

right on dude.