What do I do?!? HelP!!!

[boognish]

I recently purchased a refurbished Dual GHZ machine with 1 Gig of RAM which is plagued by the dreaded flashing problem as well as a loud fan noise. I have 3 days left to return it to the reseller for store credit. After losses on shipping, I will only be able to afford whatever the midrange machine happens to be, come late july/early august.

What would any of you do? Does anyone think the midrange machine will be better than the top of the line machine right now? I use Final Cut Pro 3 like a madman so dual processors are nice. Should I exhange it for a new midrange machine? Your input would be really, really helpful.

 

[AlphaTech]

What are you calling a loud fan?? For the flashing, are you talking about a flashing '?' or something else??? Which OS are you running??? Have you tried reinstalling the OS? How long have you had the system??? Where did you buy it?? The system should have time left on the Apple warranty, so you should be able to get it fixed by them. Did you bother to get the Applecare with the computer???

Too many questions left unanswered to help you out.

 

[mymemory]

I would always buy refurbish peripherals, not the main thing.

In your case I would return that machine, there are always good offers around, do not hasitate. Do not get desperate in getting a powerfull machine, that is the worse mood to buy something.

Get the money back no matter what and keep looking for a good deal, for sure you are gonna get a very good machine later on.

Think about the uses of your computer and then the capacity that you need. You always can add more ram and another drive. The processor is a bit hard to change. You can get good deals in ebay and you sure can hold until july. By july you can get the dual 1Ghz cheaper, may be it will take the mid range position, Apple need faster machines in the market right now.

I was about to upgrade my G4 400 but it cost me $800 for a dual G4 500, I may wait later too.

 

[boognish]

More INFO on Dual Gig Problems

When I say "flashing problem" I just assumed everyone knew about that seeing as how it's been all over the discussion boards (there are almost 1,000 posts concerning this problem on the apple discussion board)
I'm running OS 10.1.4 with 1 GB of RAM. The fan is not broken, it's just loud (another problem I've seen posted by many, many users).

I've talked to tier 2 tech support that pretty much confirmed that the logic boards of the dual GHZ machines are fundamentally flawed (problem with how the logic board interacts with the agp slot) and they are working on a software fix. HOWEVER, it's been 6 MONTHS since Apple has known about this and a solution has yet to be presented.

Luckily my machine only flashes a 1/2 second of garbled nonsense once or twice a day, but there have been reports of that increasing over time. Who knows if this is damaging to the screen or computer? IT IS NOT a driver problem. It is hardware.

My machine is completely useable, don't get me wrong. It's fast and it hasn't crashed once. I'm just a little scared that this machine is the product of Apple saying, "Quick! Let's throw a bunch of parts together to create a defined line between the imac and desktop machines! Hurry!"

That is where my problem lies. I like the speed. But the machine has had many problems reported. I don't know what to do. Perhaps these problems aren't as serious as reported? When people are happy with their machines they don't tend to go spreading the word all over the internet. I am at a complete loss as to what decision to make. Take a financial loss and get a new midrange machine, or wait for the software/firmware update to arrive and hope that nothing else goes wrong with this dual gig.

CHECK OUT THESE SITES FOR MORE INFO:

MacNET v2
http://www.macnet2.com/index.php?itemid=130

APPLE DISCUSSION BOARD:
http://discussions.info.apple.com/
(go to powermac -> powermac quicksilver 2002 -> displays ->
and then select the discussion with 957 posts!)