How reliable is the Mac Mini or iMac (2009) models?

Question

Greetings to you all. I have a question directed at anyone who owns the 2009 Mac Mini or has recently bought a Mac Mini either last year 2009 or this year, 2010. My Acer Aspire L-100 finally died on 29th Dec 2009 as a result of USB failure caused by a windows auto update. Fed up with Microsoft, I am thinking about switching over to Mac and thought the Mac Mini or iMac would be a good start. I am however troubled by the numerous complaints I am reading on the Apple website posts regarding the 2009 model Mac Mini loosing sound after a month or two of use and some posts claim that the sound on their Mac Mini is distorted, crackling and some had broken systems out of the box. How many of you have had similar sound issues with the Mac Mini? Also, is it better to get the iMac 21.5 inch instead? Has anyone had hardware issues with the Mac Mini and or the 21.5 inch iMac in less than 2-6 months of use? If so please let me know so that I can make up my mind, whether to purchase Mac computer platform or just build my own customized machine. What I need to know is, how reliable or durable is the mac mini computer, especially the 2009 model and how does the mac mini, especially with its small size, handle temperatures? Does the mac mini overheat? Please help. All information will be highly appreciated.

Answer 1

Remember, Apple offers a 1 year hardware warranty and 90 days free software support, both of which can be extended to three years from date of computer's purchase. This means if you appear to have what is a technical issue with your machine off the bat, Apple will cover the lemon issue, if it is obvious it is not an issue you the user could have caused. Mind you, if issues appear much later during the ownership, it gets harder to justify that it is a manufacturer issue. As long as you don't upgrade the internal hardware, the hardware test CD that comes with the machine will be able to tell if there is a manufacturer issue with the machine. All bets are off, if you change the RAM, or hard drive beyond the specs of the machine. Apple publishes the specs of the machine on http://support.apple.com/
Your machine shouldn't overheat unless you excede the published specs.
The advantage of the Mac is that malware and viruses are practically a nonissue, and everything you usually could desire is already built-in to the machine. So while you could build your own machine, you can't really get the integrated hardware and software as you do with the Mac.
Yes, the 27" iMac has been hit hard with issues, more around the display than anything else. I for one, if were forced to get an iMac, would get the 21.5".
I've not seen any specific Mac Mini issues really come to the fore.
If sound is lost on a Mac Mini, it usually is due to the fact that minijack connectors themselves are fragile to begin with, and endusers tend to jiggle them a lot in the connector, causing the connectivity to get lost. If you are careful to follow these directions about cables*:
http://www.macmaps.com/frayguide.html
You should avoid most of those issues. Thankfully there are 5 USB ports on Mac Minis, and USB audio is frequently better than the built-in audio, except when adding your own 5.1 speaker system with mini-Toslink connector speakers.
Don't forget the number of posters to this board, don't even amount to 1 tenth of a percent of all purchasers of iMacs, Mac Minis, or MacBooks any one quarter. Thus the remark you said was "rude" is not. It is factual. You are basing your information on what amounts to less odds of happening than a space program disaster with NASA. Mostly people who have problems are posting, and those who don't rarely do post.
I recently had a hard drive die after the three year warranty was spent, but hard drives I've seen die on Acers and Dells on the first day of ownership too, so that's nothing new. Backing up your data is the best way to deal with data loss*:
http://www.macmaps.com/backup.html
- * Links to my pages may give me compensation.