About a week ago, I finally decided I wanted to sell it to help pay for the next gadget. Selling a dead iMac would be more difficult and significantly less lucrative than selling a working one with a big new hard drive, so I decided I’d bite the bullet and try the repair myself. I found a guide online for a 20″ iMac and figured it was close enough to get me through it. After picking up some additional tools and a new 1.5TB drive, I got started.

As it turns out, a 24″ iMac (at least this one) was fairly different from the 20″ but not so much so that I couldn’t’ figure things out.

• It was tricky to tell if the front bezel latch was actually released; I’m starting to think this model doesn’t really have any latches like the guide shows. It wasn’t really clear to me if the latches are connected to the front bezel or the rest of the case. If it’s the front bezel, there were no latches.
• Mine doesn’t seem to have an EMI shield, at least not a big one covering the lower components. Individual components seem to have their own shielding.
• The display screws were T9 instead of T10.
• I realized I don’t have any small magnetic screwdrivers. I had to use a magnetic screwdriver bit and a paper clip to retrieve the display screws.
• The inverter cable was not under the display as I expected; it was completely visible once the bezel came off. It could have been disconnected before attempting to lift the screen.
• The placement of the components inside the case was quite a bit different than the guide pics. The hard drive was horizontal across the middle instead of vertically on the left.
• The drive itself is held in place with pins on one side and a compression bracket on the other. It was a really easy transition to the new drive.

Taking everything apart took about 3 hours. I wanted to take my time so I wouldn’t do something stupid. I also made sure to separate each set of screws into a labeled envelope so I wouldn’t’ get anything mixed up. It was probably took another 30 minutes to put it back together once I got the new hard drive inside. Now I’m working on installing OS X so I can make sure I got everything reconnected correctly. Anybody want to buy an iMac?

Update: Everything seems to have gone well except that the iSight camera was not connected correctly on the first try. Luckily it didn’t take much effort to get to it and fix the issue.

I did some quick reading at camcorderinfo.com and played with a few cameras at Best Buy before settling on the JVC Everio GZ-MG330. It’s a hard drive camcorder that can store about 7 hours of video at the highest quality setting. It’s surprisingly small and light, so hopefully it will be easy to use. It’s not overly fancy, but it should do the job quite nicely. It came from Amazon today and I’ve spent some minimal time playing with it.

For the next several days at least we’ll probably be headed by our lot pretty much every day to take some pictures and shoot video. Assuming I can figure out how to get videos onto the computer, I’ll be putting some up on the web for all to see.

Oh yeah, I also joined twitter.

Update 5/2/2008 7:35PM: They didn’t do any digging today. It rained pretty hard this morning, maybe that caused the delay.

…and it comes with a very sexy 24″ screen.

I blame my iPod. Thank God for Epic’s computer loan program.

read more | digg story

Software houses we spoke with also waxed on the immediate advantage to Nintendo’s approach with Revolution, which is, of course, system price. Every developer was in agreement that Revolution should launch with a price tag of $149 or lower. Some speculated that based on the tech, a $99 price point would not be out of the question.

That’s pretty crazy, considering the Nintendo DS is currently $129.99. I’ll remain skeptical until closer to launch.

read more | digg story

“Holographic media makes it possible for millions of pages of information and high definition images to be held on one small, relatively inexpensive disc,” said Steven Pofcher, senior marketing manager at Maxell. “Imagine having a person’s entire medical history, complete with MRI images, or storing a broadcast network’s entire HD Library on a single disc. These are both possible with holographic technology, which has such large capacity that approximately a half million 300-page books can be stored on a single disc.”

Now how “relatively inexpensive” will each disc be?

Update: Here’s a little expansion on Cringely’s article.

read more | digg story