Our G4 Mac Mini dies costing us $44 a month

In December, 2006 I bought a G4 Apple Mac Mini for my wife for Christmas and three days ago it died. It’s bad enough Apple came out with an Intel version within 4 or 5 weeks of my purchase but to have the thing die after 18 months makes it by far the most expensive computer I’ve ever owned based on of operation. That’s not to mention my wife used it maybe 15-30 minutes a day, if that. It’s not like it was running protein folding or some similar CPU intensive task rather it was in sleep mode the vast majority of the past 18 months.

And by died I mean pressing the power button does absolutely nothing. I’ve tried two different power supplies, resetting the PMU as well as taking out the RAM and re-seating it all to no avail. Yesterday, I took it to the Apple store Los Gatos where they told me "the worst case scenario for repair is $460.23" and that my only option is to authorize them for the worst case and they would charge me accordingly based on the type of repair required. They mentioned that if the machine had to be completely replaced the data on it would be lost, so I don’t even get the dead box back. Perhaps needless to say but I’m not going to go that route.

If anyone has suggestions for Mac Mini repair I’m all ears. I’ve read a few good things about DT&T in Fremont and that will likely be my choice unless I hear otherwise.

[Update: July 7, 2008] Here is how things turned out.