I’m not a big fan of buying refurbished stuff from anybody. You know it was a machine that probably had some problem which they fixed, but maybe they didn’t catch all the problems with it. I bought a refurbished TV and it had problems almost immediately. In my experience, you generally have to cash in on the warranty if you get a refurb item, but I’ve also experienced that once the problem(s) are fixed, the unit seems to run well. So, go ahead and send the machine in for its repair and if that fixes all your problems, then the money you saved buying a refurbished item only cost you a few days without the computer…

I’m just going to say what everyone else is thinking!

Macs are indestructible! ALL problems are due to user error. If you do have a problem with a mac, DON’T TELL ANYONE!

I.E. THIS IS YOUR FAULT KCT!! Your membership in the cult is looking shaky.

iKID, iKID
LOL!

P.S. The complete reverse is true for Wintel – All problems, including acts of nature, physics or human stupidity are to be immediately and LOUDLY blamed to MSFT. :P

Sorry to hear of your woes; even Macs aren’t immune to the laws of physics. Hard disks and RAM seem to be the main culprits. As was mentioned, though, on the Mac, reinstalling your OS is pretty much never the solution. I’d be really surprised if something with this many crashes in so many apps isn’t hardware.

Darn it. Just when you all had me believeing that a Mac never crashes.

Anoher fantasy in my life shot to hell. Oh well, I will feel better ordering one now, it won’ make my life with Windows seem as bad as I feared. :) I mean, what fun is a computer that never crashes? What would I do with all that time? Hmmmmm

Wow, that sucks, Kevin. Hopefully they will fix it and return it quickly. It’s amazing how fast these types of posts turn into Holy OS wars. :)

Is there some additional RAM in there ? If there is, try running without it. It may point you in the right direction.

Nik

Welcome to Mac-land. Start visiting MacFixIt.com, MacOSXHints.com, MacInTouch.com and Powerpage.org EVERY single day to keep on top of OSX. And follow MacFixIt’s update procedure precisely. Seriously!

Been there done that all too long.

Kevin,

I upgraded two iMacs late last year with refurbished machines. My wife’s seemed great, but mine had a Superdrive problem, so back it went, to be replace by another, which had a case deficiency (expansion bay screws stripped), so it went back and was replaced with a NEW, not refurbished machine, and all was great. The day after, my wife’s machine went kablooie, no sound from the speakers. Her iMac was past the two week return date, so it was taken to a Mac faciltiy where they replaced the motherboard, which burned up the day we got the machine back home (a drive of fifty miles each way as we live in the sticks). Apple replaced the motherboard yet again (that’s 3 motherboards in that machine) and so far it’s worked well.

Apple’s hardware used to be better than PCs; now, maybe not. I won’t buy a refurbished anything from Apple again because I don’t think they do a good job refurbishing. One of my iMacs arrived with leopard stripes which I finally deduced came from being washed down and then covered while still wet with plastic that had dust on it. I was able to remove them with a good cleaning, but still.

However, all that said, I still love how the Mac works once the hardware issues are dealt with. They’re machines, not angels. Better, not perfect, than Windows stuff.

By the way, one of our iMacs came with the production memory slot empty and the expansion slot filled, so the ram in your computer may not be what Apple originally shipped.

Richard

Oh boy…here we go again. I was wondering how long it would take a Harvey to come on in and shoot the breeze. Congratulations Harvey, you made my lunch break. Kevin is neither bringing macs down, making a cheap shot; or glorifying Vista. Its OK Harvey, he was merely making an observation. Please enlighten us with your statistical evidence to back your ‘per 1000′ unit claims. I maintain that 86.7% of documented statistics are made up anyhow. Use whatever hardware platform suits your needs, and leave the one upmanship to the great fanboy unwashed. Thanks again for for keeping to the ‘overly sensitive mac user’ stereotype Harvey.

Kevin, this site is a treasure trove of information for the Tablet PC using community. In my business, this oft maligned hardware platform has quite literally improved my productivity, and my businesses profits directly. I regularly read this site precisely because of this platform. In my first comment, I was alluding to the onslaught of posters like Harvey that even mentioning macs exposes you to. Between Tablet PC’s and the ascendent UMPC platform, there is plenty for you to focus on with devolving into another platform flame board. Its hump day, the weather is beautiful here in California. have a nice week everyone. You too Harvey.

I’ve been using my ibook for two years now, and never, ever, had a crash. I also use xp. If I can choose what to use, I choose the mac. But yours is a terrible experience, and even though I notice that you “really don’t want to be without the machine for any length of time”, maybe you should ask for your money back. It wouldn’t be logical to continue using OS X when you say that:”I had more system crashes and downtime in the the last few days on the Mac than I did with Vista over the past year.”