Summer's Here! Looking Back On An Expensive Spring

Now that we’re officially in summer, I’m hoping it’s safe to look back on what’s been an interesting spring around my household, especially when it comes to technology. Interesting, in this case, being a euphemism for aggravating and bloody expensive. One of the victims of this relentless season was a G5 iMac, the subject of my very first post on GeekDad.

The exact sequence of events is a little blurry, although if I wanted to expend the effort, I could simply dig out the repair and/or replacement receipts and reconstruct things with complete accuracy. I think I’ll wing it, though.

Let’s say that the first gadget to bite the dust was my wife’s new digital camera- new as in a several month old replacement for her previous new camera that one of our dogs chewed up… This one was lost to a snow bank incident, one of the lesser known hazards of walking in The Great White North. The replacement was, in turn, replaced with a Canon Powershot SX110IS, which she has found to be a very satisfactory point and shooter. We considered duct-taping this one to her hand (duct tape being the national adhesive and general fix-it solution of choice here in Canada), but instead we’re going to be extra careful and see how it goes.

Natasha’s DS was next up. This poor device had seen several years of good service, but multiple drops had chipped away at the plastic hinges, despite protective cases. A squabble between her brothers finally did it in and we ended up with a DS snapped in two at the hinges. There is still an intact wire and ribbon cable between the two halves of the clamshell, but at least one wire is severed. I’m holding on to this one for a future tear down project; at least some good will come of it that way.

Spring 2009's 2nd Electronic Casualty. Photo: Brad Moon

My first GeekDad post was about my G5 iMac, my primary machine at the time. The boys had stuffed photo paper scraps in the DVD slot, forcing me to replace the optical drive. Good times… Now sitting in the kitchen and serving as the kids’ machine, it suffered a power supply failure in March. I had it replaced (so it was now on its third), but no luck with convincing Apple to eat the repair cost. A few weeks after it came back from the shop and its $300 repair, the logic board failed. I couldn’t find any sign of leaking capacitors, but given the history of these machines, I suspect that was the culprit. I was too fed up to attempt any further repairs (and besides, without their computer, everyone else was clamoring to use mine), so I sold it off for parts and replaced it with a new iMac. The new one is the same size, twice the speed and half the price, but the G5 20″ definitely had a better display than the current 20″ model.

As if that weren’t enough, my current writing machine, a 24″ iMac, which was only 14 months old (and no, stupid me never springs for AppleCare), promptly suffered a catastrophic hard drive failure. No warning, just died. Even in Target Disk mode, it couldn’t be accessed. Back to the shop (the Intel iMacs are less of a do-it-yourself project than the G5s) and another $300 and it’s back in business. At this point, I have to say that Apple did a pretty bang on job with Time Machine. Two hours after the computer was back on my desk, it was in exactly the same state I’d left it in- other than the busted up hard drive, of course.

It’s all been almost enough to make me long for simpler things, but then I consider that we’ve probably spent more money (and definitely way more time) trying to keep up with the damage the dogs did to the yard during the spring thaw. I’d forgotten how much energy puppies have. Definitely more than me at this point…