Death of an iSight
Ever since I sent a couple of iSight’s out to two of my sons, we’ve been using the cameras quite a bit to host one-on-one or three-way conversations. I had a one-on-one with Tim last week using my 1.8 GHz iMac but got choppy audio. So, I moved the camera and its stand back to my dual processor G5 PowerMac.
Knowing the three of us would probably talk sometime that weekend, I cranked up the PowerMac, started iChat, and waited for it to recognize the iSight. I wanted to tweak the lighting in the room and make sure the camera was ready to go. But when iSight started, it showed me eligible only for an audio chat. Checking the camera, I cycled it off and on and noticed its power light would come on and go back out. iSight would not recognize it no matter what I did, and that included unplugging the camera and its connectors, restarting the PowerMac, and trying the camera with a different chord and Firewire port. I borrowed my wife’s iSight, plugged it in, and iChat recognized it right away. To absolutely lock down that my iSight was dead, I tried it on my iMac. No joy.
Normally, I have receipts for every piece of computer hardware and software I own. But I couldn’t find anything for this unit, except the web order number from Apple. I couldn’t research the purchase date because the Apple website “order status and history” does not go back that far. I knew I had owned the unit for quite some time, but I wasn’t sure exactly how long. My wife thought I had bought it about the same time she bought hers, and that’s been an almost unbelievable two years. That meant the warranty had expired. Apple would repair it but for the same money it cost to buy a new one. So, I ordered a new unit.
The salient point is that iSight’s do fail, and this is something to consider when buying a new iMac with an integrated one. If you do and the iSight dies, are you willing to surrender your iMac for service and take the down time that will accompany that? If the answer is “no’, then you might want to look for one of the previous units or just wait to see what Apple’s switch to Intel means to the product line and use an external iSight. If you’re comfortable with that, press head. I’m sure the new iMacs will be a good buy. (Note: If I was going after one of the new iMacs, I’d go with a 20 inch screen. The inclusion of Front Row and the Apple Remote sets these systems up to be used to view videos, slideshows, and whatever else where a larger screen would be most profitable. Even without a TV tuner or PVR, you could drag one of these into a room and use it as an entertainment center.)
Knowing the three of us would probably talk sometime that weekend, I cranked up the PowerMac, started iChat, and waited for it to recognize the iSight. I wanted to tweak the lighting in the room and make sure the camera was ready to go. But when iSight started, it showed me eligible only for an audio chat. Checking the camera, I cycled it off and on and noticed its power light would come on and go back out. iSight would not recognize it no matter what I did, and that included unplugging the camera and its connectors, restarting the PowerMac, and trying the camera with a different chord and Firewire port. I borrowed my wife’s iSight, plugged it in, and iChat recognized it right away. To absolutely lock down that my iSight was dead, I tried it on my iMac. No joy.
Normally, I have receipts for every piece of computer hardware and software I own. But I couldn’t find anything for this unit, except the web order number from Apple. I couldn’t research the purchase date because the Apple website “order status and history” does not go back that far. I knew I had owned the unit for quite some time, but I wasn’t sure exactly how long. My wife thought I had bought it about the same time she bought hers, and that’s been an almost unbelievable two years. That meant the warranty had expired. Apple would repair it but for the same money it cost to buy a new one. So, I ordered a new unit.
The salient point is that iSight’s do fail, and this is something to consider when buying a new iMac with an integrated one. If you do and the iSight dies, are you willing to surrender your iMac for service and take the down time that will accompany that? If the answer is “no’, then you might want to look for one of the previous units or just wait to see what Apple’s switch to Intel means to the product line and use an external iSight. If you’re comfortable with that, press head. I’m sure the new iMacs will be a good buy. (Note: If I was going after one of the new iMacs, I’d go with a 20 inch screen. The inclusion of Front Row and the Apple Remote sets these systems up to be used to view videos, slideshows, and whatever else where a larger screen would be most profitable. Even without a TV tuner or PVR, you could drag one of these into a room and use it as an entertainment center.)
posted by Andy Foster at
4:11 PM
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