Mac Madness

So several years ago, I got my first Macintosh. It was 2003 and I got an old 1998 Wallstreet Powerbook. It was a little foreign at first, but as I used it more and more, I found that I wanted to use it more and more. I began to really like it and in 2005, I bought myself and Kasey two new iBooks.

Since then, my 14 incher has worked flawlessly. Kasey's 12 incher however has had… issues. First off, let me say that Kasey has gotten every penny's worth of use out of that laptop. She has used it so much that the letters have been rubbed off of many of the keys. Her laptop has had the hard drive replaced, the power supply replaced, the hinge clutch replaced, the mother board removed and reflowed (fixes a poor solder job at the factory that causes the video to not work) and the memory upgraded (ok, that is really simple). Anyway, I have done all of those myself and needless to say, I have gotten really good at taking that laptop apart.

She recently has had to abandon it and start using mine because it would just stop working sometimes. I looked into it and it seemed to be a bad hard drive. After a trip to Altex, 20 minutes replacing the hard drive, and another 30 installing OSX, it ends up that it is the ATA controller that is bad.

This is pretty bad news because that is what makes the hard drive work. If that is broken you pretty much cannot use the laptop. Since it is built in to the main logic board, it is expensive to replace. I looked around on eBay and I can get a new (used, but working) logic board for $150 or a whole identical working laptop like hers for $200. It looks like that is the end of the road for her laptop. Mr. FrankenMac will be sold for parts when I get back from Montana.

On another note though, I was cruising craigslist and found someone selling 2 17 inch G5 iMac's for $400! The catch: they are broken. One just needs a fan ($20) and the other needs a power supply ($65) and a hard drive (I have one already!). So for about $500 Kasey and I will be enjoying OSX desktop style!

I did tell Kasey that if I do not have them fixed by her birthday that I will sell them. That gives me two months! I have a really bad habit of starting or planning projects and never getting to them, but I have already ordered the power supply, I already have a hard drive, but I cannot get that stupid fan out! I am afraid that I am going to break something just trying to get the stupid fan out of there.

Anyway, I looked on Apple's website and it seems that I can get a refurbished 20 inch new Intel iMac for about $800. I think that once these iMac's are fixed, I can sell them for about $450 each, so I may do that and just buy a new iMac. I think that this time I am just going to plop down the $250 for Apple Care also…

Yeah, so I am a nerd and that is what I have been up to. :)