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ebuddy · Jun 14, 2007, 07:28 AM

It seems with every Apple purchase I find out; "known glitch, happens with all of 'em", then two years after the fact find out that we're dealing with yet another product that exceeds a 10% failure rate. I'm now dealing with a dual 2.0Ghz G5 PPC that will likely need a new logicboard. (started with wake from sleep, now to monitor blinking off for no reason). Granted, I might be a little bitter as my first tangerine iMac died because of convection-cooling flaw, tibook with two broken hinges and a dead logicboard, and now this G5 with dying logicboard.

Have there been any published reliability measurements on these intel Mac Pros? I really have to decide if I'm going to continue down this road. Don't get me wrong, I love OSX and I love the function and appearance of these machines, and this is not a complaint or rant thread, but an honest question on how these machines compare to PCs in reliability.

bballe336 · Jun 14, 2007, 02:20 PM

In a PC you are much more likely to have failures. There is no where near a 10% failure rate on macs. I have a 10 year old G3/4 and it still works fine.

ebuddy · Jun 15, 2007, 06:46 AM

Originally Posted by bballe336

In a PC you are much more likely to have failures. There is no where near a 10% failure rate on macs. I have a 10 year old G3/4 and it still works fine.

I appreciate your response. That's the reason I was wondering. The Dell I use at work sits under my desk, gets bumped, kicked, rarely dusted or maintained and has been chugging away for the past 4.5 years. I was able to find some info through two other outlets including Consumer Reports and as of 2006, Apple was still on top. I was starting to think it was just Apple or just me. It turns out it's just computers in general.

bballe336 · Jun 15, 2007, 09:01 AM

Originally Posted by ebuddy

I appreciate your response. That's the reason I was wondering. The Dell I use at work sits under my desk, gets bumped, kicked, rarely dusted or maintained and has been chugging away for the past 4.5 years. I was able to find some info through two other outlets including Consumer Reports and as of 2006, Apple was still on top. I was starting to think it was just Apple or just me. It turns out it's just computers in general.

I agree, computers in general are always a risk and they all break eventually. And even if you know the exact failure rates of a model you can never know what type of environment those failed computers ran in. I have a PC as well and that hardware has been fine for the last 3 or so years but I can NEVER avoid problem with XP, even if I were to have to replace parts every once in a while in the mac it'd be worth it because I wouldn't have to deal with windows.

roller · Jun 15, 2007, 09:49 AM

I have a lab with over 25 Macs of various models that I have purchased over the last seven years (see signature), so I feel somewhat qualified to answer this question, at least with anecdotal evidence.

My early purchases include early model iMacs (blue and red: school colors) and G4 PowerMacs. ALL of them are still chugging away except one G4 whose power supply died about two months ago. They all run Tiger and do so pretty well with upgraded RAM.

I have had two CRT monitors and one Cinema Display die, and I have had to replace the hard drive in the red iMac. I have never (knocking on wood) had a logic board failure.

In fact, the only computer that does not remain in my lab out of all the macs I've added is an eMac that I finally gave up on after the video card died (it had had other issues, too). It is the only computer I have ever had to dispose of.

They are not perfect and they, like PC's, have issues from time to time, but in my experience, Macs are damned good machines. And if you have AppleCare, the world is a happier place.

chris v · Jun 15, 2007, 10:04 AM

I've owned about 20 Macs over the years. My Powerbook had a bad video card, and my Sawtooth G4 had to have the motherboard replaced, when it was about 2. I also had to have the CPUs replaced in my Quicksilver when it was about 2 1/2. I was really glad I'd bought Applecare on that one.

I think that's the sum-total of my failures, other than murdering my daughter's iBook, when I snagged a foot on the power cord and sent it flying across the room.