We had to take the iMac in for service this weekend. It would suddenly turn off (lose all power) anywhere between 5 seconds and 10 minutes after turning it on. These are the same symptoms it had a little over a year ago.
So what's going on? Did I get a lemon? Is there something in the way we use it or in the environment that causes the same problem to recur? It turns out it may be a design or manufacturing flaw. The Apple service technician found an entry for this issue in a Repair Extension Program at Apple. This indicates that multiple people have had this issue and that there has been some amount of root cause analysis performed.
This means that the repairs should be covered at no cost to me! Yay! But that also means we're without a computer for about a week. Boo! I figured out how to read our email via my ISP's web interface, so at least we won't be totally out of touch. It does mean, though, that I can't extract the 6th birthday photos from my camera just yet (although I can print them out directly from the card from my printer - they'll just be totally unedited).
This event also brings home the fact that our computer is nearing the end of its useful life. The new iMacs, while nicer than the one we have, don't seem so astounding that they make me crave an upgrade. Historically speaking, the iMac is upgraded about once a year, so if the repairs to our current iMac allow it to run well for another year, maybe we'll consider getting its replacement for my birthday in 2008.