How many people's 24" iMac is still running strong?

[Josh125]

Still use my mid 2008 daily and it works nearly as well as it did on day one. It has 4 Gb of RAM and I'm still using the ole' faithful 10.7. No failures yet. Still haven't found a reason to upgrade it either. If I do anything CPU intensive I grab my 2013 13" rMBP.

 

[marzer]

Not true. Been running a FD setup with an external FW800 drive and an internal SSD for 5 months now. No issue whatsoever, except that I now get SSD-like performance on a 2.2GB drive.

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As far as you system getting toasted, the only thing that happens if you disconnect or shut down the external portion of the FD is that the system just hangs. Plug it back in or turn it back on, and it goes right back to where it was.

Thanks for the feedback, it'll save me the hassle of configuring a test drive. But I figured it'd be similar to pulling an active boot external (which I've done in test before). Sure you may risk corruption but its not assured, and generally low risk.

 

[Suzatlarge]

24" iMac 8,1, 2.8 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, ATI Radeon HD 2600 Pro 256 MB. Bought in May 2008. Still a sweet machine, does what I need. The only real problem was the optical drive failed in 2011 but happily before AC expired, and the replacement drive has been flawless.

I've installed more RAM twice: from 2 to 4GB in 2009, and then to 6GB yesterday.

In June 2012, I had a local Apple-certified Mac shop replace the 500GB drive with a 1TB, do a clean install of ML, and of course clean the dust from the innards. The original HDD wasn't acting cranky but it was getting very full thanks to all my photo and audio files. I've been pleased with the bigger HDD, and I think it helped that I "started over" doing clean installs of apps etc.

I don't know if I'll buy another iMac when I'm ready to give up this one (or it dies on me). I'll probably get a mini, or one of the MBs. I hope I don't need to make that decision for another couple of years.

 

[topmounter]

My "Early 2009" is running great (2.93 GHz c2d, 8GB RAM, GT120 512MB). My only legitimate complaint is that the Aperture performance is merely "adequate" and that is only after the upgrade from 4GB to 8GB of RAM.

I don't know how much longer I can hold out though 😱

 

[old-wiz]

I dread my 2008 24" going down the drain. It has been extremely stable and still performs adequately. I use FW 800 for backup.

 

[Macwick]

My 2009 24" iMac (3.06 GHz Core 2 Duo, 1TB hard drive, 8GB RAM) has actually been nothing but trouble.

*After a couple of years my screen developed large dark 'smudges' around the top two corners of the screen. These eventually spread further into the display. I removed the glass cover and attempted to wipe them off, but clearly the LCD display itself was damaged (either heat damage or dust).

*I bit the bullet and bought/installed a replacement LCD display. Within a couple of months the same problem developed. I know people are going to say it's an environmental issue - my house is smoke free, pet free, and I change my HVAC filters every couple of weeks.

*Shortly after that the iMac started randomly shutting off (no warning, just loss of power). I initially thought it might be a heat issue but I installed an app to monitor temperature and all the readings were normal. In addition, in some cases it would run for days and other times it would shut off within 10 seconds of booting.

And how did I punish Apple for selling me such a defective piece of crap? By buying a brand new loaded late-2012 27" iMac of course!

I'm now mulling over whether to shell out $150 for a new power supply for the old iMac to see if that fixes the problem. Throwing more good money after bad.

 

[Arfdog]

Ok so what's the actual count here for good vs bad? Some thread.... lol.

 

[talmy]

Ok so what's the actual count here for good vs bad? Some thread.... lol.

Same as any threads like this -- only a very small percentage of owners (much less than 1%) post here making it statistically insignificant.

This thread is over a year old, making it worth even less. How many people who posted here in July 2012 with their 24" iMacs still going strong still have them, and going strong? I know that my family accounts for two of them, but how many thousands were sold?

 

[Arfdog]

Same as any threads like this -- only a very small percentage of owners (much less than 1%) post here making it statistically insignificant.

This thread is over a year old, making it worth even less. How many people who posted here in July 2012 with their 24" iMacs still going strong still have them, and going strong? I know that my family accounts for two of them, but how many thousands were sold?

Several thousands votes would be a good indicator. It's not a perfect cross-section but it's representative of those that are very particular.

It would be a more worthwhile thread if it had a vote. More data is better than no data.

 

[iSayuSay]

My 2009 24" iMac (3.06 GHz Core 2 Duo, 1TB hard drive, 8GB RAM) has actually been nothing but trouble.

*After a couple of years my screen developed large dark 'smudges' around the top two corners of the screen. These eventually spread further into the display. I removed the glass cover and attempted to wipe them off, but clearly the LCD display itself was damaged (either heat damage or dust).

*I bit the bullet and bought/installed a replacement LCD display. Within a couple of months the same problem developed. I know people are going to say it's an environmental issue - my house is smoke free, pet free, and I change my HVAC filters every couple of weeks.

*Shortly after that the iMac started randomly shutting off (no warning, just loss of power). I initially thought it might be a heat issue but I installed an app to monitor temperature and all the readings were normal. In addition, in some cases it would run for days and other times it would shut off within 10 seconds of booting.

And how did I punish Apple for selling me such a defective piece of crap? By buying a brand new loaded late-2012 27" iMac of course!

I'm now mulling over whether to shell out $150 for a new power supply for the old iMac to see if that fixes the problem. Throwing more good money after bad.

Exactly what my problem is with iMac. Bad display, bad filter, bad isolation, bad reliability. Bad. Bad. Bad

How come a product with beautiful display as main selling point actually has it to be the crappiest of all parts.

And after all this, I couldn't wonder why would you get another iMac? I still have my iMac, but after the AppleCare expired, I would just build a PC, get a non Apple 1440p display, and maybe a 13" rMBP for those "Mac times"

 

[s0nicpr0s]

No longer running strong... or at all...

Sadly my 2007 24" iMac has all but died. The Wi-Fi is shoddy at best, and Mountain Lion seems to keep killing it. Because of the wifi problems, it doesn't even currently have an OS on it. Can't stay connected long enough to redownload from internet. Besides these two issues it was running strong up until this past April.

-sigh- Time for a new computer I guess 😀

 

[ATC]

^^^
In a similar position myself. 🙁

I posted earlier in this thread that my 2009 iMac was going strong, for the most part it still is but the new display panel that was put in last year is starting to show similar deterioration due to heat to the one before. The thermal shielding on this model must be very inadequate.

It's time for a new machine and I really want something much faster and powerful than what I have. But as tempting as the new iMac is, I'm just not that eager to jump on it from my past experience. Can anyone confirm whether the display's thermal shielding in the new iMacs are drastically improved over the older models? I tried researching this online but I've come up with nothing that suggests that.

I may to have to bite the bullet and get the new Mac Pro this fall unless it's much more expensive than previous MPs.

 

[s0nicpr0s]

I may to have to bite the bullet and get the new Mac Pro this fall unless it's much more expensive than previous MPs.

I was considering doing the same thing myself. But I need a new computer sooner rather than later, and should try to get one before mid-September, early October at the latest.

Anything would be more powerful than my old iMac except for some of the low-end Airs, but your concern about the heat is something I hadn't considered.

 

[HE15MAN]

Mine died a few months ago. Been trying to sell it for parts but no buyers so far

 

[forty2j]

Mine died a few months ago. Been trying to sell it for parts but no buyers so far

I had no problem selling mine on eBay. Well, ok, one problem - the buyer couldn't pay so I had to 2nd chance it to the next bidder. As long as you're completely honest about what works, doesn't, screen condition etc and are realistic in your expectations it should move.

 

[R3DH3R0]

My late 2006 White iMac is still running well. Surprisingly the graphics card hasn't crapped out yet (knocks on wood), the 7300gt is notorious for failing.

Dual Boot of Snow Leopard and Lion. Use Snow Leopard 90% of the time because I can't stand Lion.

 

[HE15MAN]

I had no problem selling mine on eBay. Well, ok, one problem - the buyer couldn't pay so I had to 2nd chance it to the next bidder. As long as you're completely honest about what works, doesn't, screen condition etc and are realistic in your expectations it should move.

Gotcha, Ill try ebay. I was trying Amazon since its much less hassle. How much did you get?

 

[Zellio]

Sadly my 2007 24" iMac has all but died. The Wi-Fi is shoddy at best, and Mountain Lion seems to keep killing it. Because of the wifi problems, it doesn't even currently have an OS on it. Can't stay connected long enough to redownload from internet. Besides these two issues it was running strong up until this past April.

-sigh- Time for a new computer I guess 😀

There's this thing called an ethernet cable...

 

[forty2j]

Gotcha, Ill try ebay. I was trying Amazon since its much less hassle. How much did you get?

I got about $400 (including shipping) for my 2007 24" with a useless HDD and a slightly yellowing screen.

 

[HE15MAN]

I got about $400 (including shipping) for my 2007 24" with a useless HDD and a slightly yellowing screen.

Wow! Most prices I see when I was just looking were around $150

 

[Tomorrow]

My mid-2008 is still going strong as my main computer.

 

[mr.steevo]

My in-law's 2007, 2.4Ghz, 24" iMac is still their daily driver for email, YouTube, Citrix and photo editing. The RAM was maxed to 4GB in 2009 and I replaced the hard drive with a 1TB drive last year when the original failed.

Seems to be a good machine.

 

[johto]

Still using my 2007/2008 bought iMac 24" (7.1).

Its still usable on everyday stuff. I'm using it for normal internet stuff and photo & video archiving (lot of external storage). Its located in the corner of my living room and it also works as a media center where it feeds media to my HIFI and projector. I use Plex and XBMC for the media center stuff.

The only real bottleneck for my usage is the hard drive speed. I get the spinning wheel if multiple programs are reading/writing to the disk heavy. This is because Internal drive is normal HDD and its also encrypted with filevault2 (i have every disk, including externals + backups encrypted) You can call me paranoid 🙄 Anyhow, i have no real hurry to upgrade yet... Of course if it suddenly dies then its another story.

In future I may go the route of Mac laptop + external display and Synology NAS for centered RAID storage or some variation of that. 😎

Just to think about it. Its 5-6 years old now! 😱 Thats a LONG time in computer life span. If it would be a normal PC junk, it would have gone to trash long time ago 😛

 

[Brian33]

I still love my 24" Early 2008 iMac! Even more since I've recently installed an SSD and a 1 TB HDD (removing the optical drive in the process). I used the Terminal commands to put them together into a "homemade" Fusion Drive and installed OS X 10.8.4 on it.

I bought it in May of 2008, and while I guess others have had problems with dust or discoloring of the screen, mine is still as beautiful as ever. It's given me only one problem over the last 5.5 years, and I've worked around that.

(After 10.6.3 the display would "freeze" and not respond to input, sometimes more than once a day. The solution was to use the older ATI graphics drivers ("kext files"), even with newer versions of OS X. Somewhat inconvenient but it worked perfectly.)

So, with that caveat, mine is still running strong, in fact, better than ever after my upgrades! While I do have a newer quad-core MBP that is much more powerful CPU-wise, I hardly ever use it at home because I like the iMac's screen and keyboard so much more.

I am hopeful that my iMac will live for awhile yet...

 

[robanga]

Have a mid 2007 - 24 inch iMac that is still running strong and looks pristine after spending 6 yrs in a desk near our kitchen. The only upgrade has been more RAM from OWC.

I believe it will even qualify for Mavericks, but we may retire it by Christmas for a new one.