Over the past several months my Mac (iMac G5) has been acting up. Programs began to crash and load / close very slowly, opening or saving a large file could take up to 3 minutes, the fan would be working overtime, the external firewire drive would drag (and I do mean drag). As time went on, my keyboard wouldn't be recognized on boot-up and I'd have to unplug/plug it back in every time (I blamed the Microsh*t keyboard). Then last Friday the damn thing booted all the way to the desktop then it faded out. Tried booting again and it didn't even
get to the desktop, last try and the light came on and went off again. Dead in the water. I attributed this to many things, one being that my Mac was a dog - and took out my frustration on my mouse. Poor mouse.
This was a very slow process - took two years to completely die. My husband opened the back and found some interesting things. Five to be exact. Five bloated capacitors. Turns out that this is not strictly a Mac problem, but everyones problem:
Capacitor Plague
Apparently my computer took longer to bloat than usual. Mac extended the warranty from one year to three to handle this problem, however, when we took my dead Mac to the Mac Store they said it was five months out of that three year warranty. But not to worry, they were going to fix it for free anyway. No Kidding! They replaced the entire motherboard, power supply and the DVD drive -
and it was ready the next day (Saturday). Does Mac freaking rock or what?
I bought this computer used two years ago, and it seemed fine, a little slower than I'd hoped, but faster than my G3. Now my computer runs with speed that I didn't know it had and it's
quiet. I'm happy and my mouse is happy.
So, if your computer (or other electronics) is acting up, check the capacitors!