[G4] What online venders do you trust? - RAM

[John Baltutis]

On 12/31/03, Tracker at aol.com wrote:
>
> From reading the warranty papers that came with my three Macs, I have
>decided that the Apple warranty applies to "Apple" approved RAM chips if
>you install the chips yourself. These chips will cost you about double the
>normal retail price because they come from Apple.

Yep. Apple will warranty any RAM that they sell to you or put in your
machine. The third-party RAM vendor that sells you the chips warranties its
RAM.
>
> I cannot determine, with any certainty, from the papers whether a
>"third-party" RAM chip would violate the Apple warranty or not.

Not at all. Since Apple authorizes customer installable parts, they can't
then say the warranty is voided if you install same. If the CIP causes
damage to the rest of the machine, it's the parts vendor who is liable-if
you can prove the damage.

> I can tell you that certain machines will not accept "strange" RAM chips
>after the firmware update >has been performed on them.

Not atypical. Firmware and software updates usually require greater
adherence to the specifications Apple laid out for their machines. I had a
27-month old 512 MB module go south when I upgraded to Panther, even though
it worked fine with Jaguar-the vendor replaced it without any questions.

> My Gigabit Ethernet G4 refused to recognize one (1) of my 256Mb chips
>after I did the firmware update and I had to search through all my 256Mb
>chips to find a replacement that would be recognized.
>
> All my Macs are so old that the warranties have long since expired and I
>never call Apple for hardware support for them any more. Maybe next year
>Santa will bring a G? to my house, but I'm not holding my breath.
>
> My $.02 worth - Buy third party RAM, install it yourself, save up lots of
>money, and buy a G5 DP when it's on sale with extra RAM included (at least
>1Gb).

Agree with the first part; however, I think my G4, 450 MP machine is good
for another 5-10 years, siince what I do isn't computationally intensive.