Tuesday, January 29, 2013

iMac 27 Power Supply Failure

I found my iMac 27 dead after I came back from my 3 week trip to China. I turned power off before I left. When I tried to turn on my iMac 27 as I came back, the screen stays black, nothing happening. I made an appointment with Apple Help Desk. I had to leave my Mac there since a support staff could not tell what's wrong at that time. He told me two possibilities: one is power supply and another is logic board.

Fortunately, after three days I got email from Apple store my Mad ready for pick up. It was power supply issue. I told them if it is the logic board issue, contact me first. To repair or replay logic board, it would cost me about $500 or more. I was lucky. The part of PS is $69.00, and the labour is $39.00. I was told that the labour cost was reduced recently. It was $100+ before.

I am planning to update my iMac 27 so that I will get at least one year warranty. This time, I think, I'll get extended warranty with three year coverage and phone support.

Sunday, January 27, 2013

Reinstall iWork 09

I purchased iWork more than 2 years ago. I still have the original box and CD. However, I could not find its serial number. The reason I need SN is that I could not use iWork on my two MacBook Pros. Today I got the issue resolve. Actually, I don't need SN since I have to original box and CD.

Here is the background story. My daughter has used those two MacBook Pros. I think that she may installed iWork trial version from web. The trial version has only 30 day limit. After the limit, it requires SN to activate. Now I take my daughter's old MacBook Pro for my personal use. I gave her another one last year. Since she used both and she used Time Machine to restore her account, both have the same issue: SN for iWork activation.

Today, I spent some time to investigate and I got it resolved. What I need is to remove the iWork from Applications folder first. I have to remove its library folder from /Library/Applicaction Support. There is are two iWorks folders there, one for 08 and one for 09. The 09 folder should be removed.

After cleanup of the iWork, I inserted CD and installed it. There is no requirement for SN. After installation, the iWork works fine. There is option to update iWork when either Numbers or Pages is launched first time. I found this update is not from Apple's software update.

By the way, iWork 09 is good for up to 5 personal computers, according to Apple's information from web. I have not tried it over 5 yet. I doubt if can install it over more than 5. I have another 3 MacBook laptops (one MacBook, two MacBook Air) I sent to my relatives. I am going to visit them in my coming vacation. I will verify if they still have iWork or not. I'll try to install it if they don't have or they have same SN requirement issue.