Do It Yourself is a good thing (tm)

Apple, with the unveiling of the iMac G5 has started a new technical support system where they actually send the spare parts, special tools and instructions to the customers to do the repairs themselves. Julien relates his recent experience with this new system.

Just wanted to share my experience with replacing a part myself on my iMac G5.
Last Friday, I finally took delivery of my iMac G5, I started to move things from my old mac onto my spanking new machine, but the iMac had an odd behavior, it was crashing during file copies, apps were randomly crashing... up until the moment when it simply refused to startup ! The hard drive couldn't be found.
That was Sunday. After various vain attempts to revive the spinning dude, I finally took up the phone and called AppleCare to check their opening hours... and a guy answered!!! they even work on Sundays.
I explain my problems, I am asked to do a few hardware tests, then the guy concludes my HD is dead and that he'll initiate a replacement. He asks me if I do not mind receiving the part and proceding with the exchange myself, to which I answered "no problem".
3 days later, a UPS guy is at the door with a hard drive. The package contains the disk, a screw driver, spare screws, a SATA connector and printed instructions, along with a UPS sticker to send back the failing HD.
3 minutes and we're done. My iMac is doing fine, and I'm off to put everything in the package to send it back to Apple, shipping cost being already prepaid... all in less than 10 days.
So, Way to go AppleCare !!!!

That's much better than having to send the whole machine away for weeks :)