Hi everyone,
I am looking for desktop to replace my old 2010 iMac (its board is burned due to heat). However, I still want to stick with OSX, with its simplicity and robustness. I come with few options:
- iMac - which potentially got heated and burned again. Also, once the board got problem, the screen is useless even it still functional and vice versa
- Mac mini - which never been get updated since 2014
- Hackintosh - difficult to setup and I am not familiar with hardware and component
- Others?
What do you guys think for mac desktop alternative today? I plan to use the desktop for my kids - to support their school assignment (high school), a bit of video editing and gaming (sometime). Also the budget should be no more than $2,000.
Thanks for the advices.
Do you have an idea why the first iMac got overheated and burned? All Macs have thermal sensors that should shutdown the Mac before it overheats and burns.
I understand the human tendency to avoid repeating yesterday's disaster, but the usage you described for the new computer should not over-stress an iMac. If the kids will be using it in a room that meets Apple's environmental standards, I would not expect the same failure to happen again.
I certainly wouldn't build a Hackintosh for the kids - it's not going to be a maintenance-free solution. It will take a lot of time and effort to design and build, and in the end, the thermal engineering of that Hackintosh may be no better (or even worse) than the thermal engineering of an iMac. You'd be doing a lot of work just to avoid the work (or cost) of a repair that, in most circumstances, is unlikely to reoccur.
The thermal engineering and repairability of an iMac is similar to that of a laptop, so if repair-avoidance was your primary concern, forget about the laptop.
If you're concerned about liquid spills (as any parent might), any CPU configuration that separates the "box" from the spill site (whether elevated like an iMac, or physically separated like a Mini or Hackintosh tower) is preferable to a laptop - it's cheaper to replace a keyboard than to possibly replace every internal component of the computer.
I'm an iMac fan. I currently have four in the house, more in the office. The oldest currently running is an early 2008, which has been in constant-on operation for most of the last 9+ years. It's had its software issues (but then, I've run a lot of OS X betas on it), but it's never needed a hardware repair (it still has its original HDD). In fact, only one of all the iMacs I've owned/maintained (including the retired G5's) needed a hardware repair - and that was for the display tilt hinge (late 2013 27" iMac, a known issue with that model that Apple fixed at no charge).
Now, one person's experience is not a statistically valid sample, even with the number of iMacs I've had (if I was back in IT management and had far larger numbers of machines to administer, my experience might be more valid). Statistical variation being what it is, a lucky person can continue to be lucky, an unlucky person can be unlucky again. So, I can't promise you another iMac would be trouble-free. All I can say is I wouldn't hesitate to buy another (and another) for my personal use or business.
