What Should Be The "Life" Of A First Generation G5?

Question

Firstly, I became a rabid Mac user about 3 years ago. I love them. My G5 (first generation) is nearly 3 years old. I have 50 days left on Apple Care (thankfully) and have made an appointment to take it in tomorrow.
I am having problems addressed on other threads, i.e. as of this morning, when I power up, I get the grey screen, loud fan, etc. and that's it. Also, the past couple weeks the computer shuts down, randomly and on it's own. I phoned Apple Care and they had me reset the SMU and the PRAM. It didn't do any good.
About a year ago, I couldn't even boot up my Mac. Took it in to the dealer and they replaced the power supply, etc. Worked fine. Then about 3 weeks ago these current problems started. Hopefully they will be able to repair it. The question is, should the repairs take care of the problems and for how long? (I realize each machine is different, depending on the user, etc.) Also, when I spoke to the gal at Apple, she said the internal hard drives only live to a certain age. How long should they last?
I just want to make sure that I am getting all of the necessary repairs (covered under warranty) to ensure several more months or hopefully, years of enjoyment with this G5. So the question, how long before one gives up on a machine and moves to a new one? I'm a student and don't have the resources to buy the latest model.
Appreciate these discussion boards and your feed back. Also, would appreciate any suggestions on what I should "demand" that they do under the terms of my warranty? Thanks!

Answer 1

Just thought I would pass something on regarding my Mac and my experience at the Genius Bar. As I said, yesterday when powering up I couldn't get past the gray screen it it's hanging in the open firmware. This morning, when I took it in to the Apple store, the young and very pleasant gal couldn't even get it to boot up. Finally she was able to boot it up with their external HD. She ran disk utility and there was a bunch of corrupted stuff. I'm no techie, but I saw a lot of read lines indicating problems. She seemed to think the continual, intermittent and random shutdown of the computer (on it's own) wreaked havoc on the HD. Evidently she was able to repair this on site.
I was impressed with this conscientious gal, because she picked up things that I didn't even notice. She detected a high pitch emitting from the power supply. I couldn't hear it, but she and her colleague could. That's good enough for me! Also she noticed a slight almost imperceptible flickering of the screen. Great, repair it!
The bottom line, to get the ball rolling, she ordered a new power supply as well as a new LCD display. Also she took note that I had the power supply replaced a year ago. On the repair ticket, she wrote up the following:
*Proposed Resolution: Replace power supply but really make sure that fixes the issue. Customer has had power supply replaced before and the issue is back again. Customer's warranty expires soon and he wants to make sure it's fixed before his coverage expires. Also noticed flickering screen while computer was starting up. Possible LCD replacement.*
Just thought I would pass this on, because others have had similar problems. But the real moral to the story as I see it is this: +If you have bought a new Mac and it is still under warranty or if you have AC protection, and the computer isn't performing the way you think it should, take it back to the dealer and have it checked out.+ This is what I should have done a couple months ago when it was in the nascent stages of acting up.
We shall see what happens!