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It turns out that something went wrong during the repair and instead of having me wait on another part I was going to be given a new / replacement iMac and the data transfer was to get everything moved over. Talking to the tech when I picked up the machine it sounds as if someone “plugged something in wrong” or somehow made the logic board (motherboard in Apple-speak) fail and instead of waiting for yet another part to arrive Apple instead opted to just give me a new machine. This includes a receipt exchanging my machine for the new one, AppleCare transfer, and all.
The machine returned to me is the Mid 2010 model which has some nice upgrades over my original one (Late 2009), as shown here. Specifically, it has a slightly faster processor (2.96GHz Intel i7-870 vs. 2.80GHz Intel i7-860) and better video (ATI Radeon HD 5750 w/1GB RAM vs. ATI Radeon HD 4850 w/ 512MB RAM) and a comparable hard drive (Western Digital WDC WD1001FALS-40Y6A0 vs. Seagate ST31000528ASQ).
The nicest upgrade was the way the RAM ended up being reconfigured. When I took my Late 2009 27″ iMac in it was fitted with 4x 2GB 1066MHz PC3-8500 SO-DIMMs; two OEM Apple parts and two purchased from Crucial. When returned to me the new / Mid 2010 machine had 2x Apple 4GB 1333MHz PC3-10667 SO-DIMMs. This swap was necessitated by the newer machine’s faster RAM requirements, and it’s really nice to see that Apple replaced things in this way. Before this I had no free slots, which meant that going above 8GB of RAM would have required me to throw out two existing modules. Now there are two free slots, so whenever the next upgrade comes around I won’t have to toss out any parts.
This worked out pretty well, as the new machine has a just-fine display that came wrapped up just like new. There’s a slight small bit of what appears to be plastic on the inside of the glass in the lower right corner, but it’s so small that I don’t really notice it and can probably remove it with a slight puff of air; nothing to complain about at all. There was also a small black smudge on the front bezel, but this came off with a bit of alcohol.
While this whole experience was a bit frustrating overall, I’m content that it worked out this way. I received a newer machine, it appears to work fine, and my inconvenience was offset by a minor, but nice upgrade. And to think it all started with nothing more than a bad optical drive…
(As part of the upgrade I also received the disc set that goes with the machine, and this includes an iLife 11 install disc. This will be quite handy.)
Update on October 21, 2014: When at the Apple store attempting to get the GPU in this iMac fixed for free, I found out what happened to my original 2009 iMac: the LVDS connector on the logic board was damaged. Apple must have then opted to replace the entire machine.