OmniRune’s iMac Explodes

Never do video encoding on an enclosed heat death trap. Ever.

Going through the routine of digitizing my DVD collection, I put in Family Guy, went to sleep, and came back to the computer in the morning to find it turned off. And cold.

“Huh,” I thought to myself as I reached over to press the power button. Nothing. Looking down to the power strip, I turned it off and on, and then proceeded to press the power button. Silence. No whirl of the hard drive or the fan turning on.

A phone call, a day later and a trip to the apple store has resulted in confirming my worst fear: the power supply is fine. However, your computer has suffered a logic board failure.

“How much is that going to cost?” I asked. “$700 plus labor” cheerfully replied the Apple guy. “Take out the hard drive,” I asked him. He glanced at me, crunching some thoughts in his head, and then said “Why would you want that?”

“I have an external SATA enclosure. I want to take that hard drive and take the contents off. I am not paying $700 to fix a two year old computer when a new iMac costs $200 more.” He looked at me, nodded, and agreed.

I’m not buying another iMac. I require too much heavy-lifting to have it run by a machine that is essential an immobile laptop. I want professional quality, with a tower and unlimited room for additional hard drives.

A mac pro.

Pricing one out brings it to $4000. $3000 more than I want to spend. $2500 premium over building one yourself.

Today my parts arrive for my new machine. I went with an Intel i7 920 2.66 with 12 GB DDR3 RAM, 6 TB total hard drive capacity, ATI Radeon 4870 1 GB, 23″ LCD screen and a classy black case. Total cost? Mid-ranged iMac. Total power? A $4000 Mac Pro.

Loving it.