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Is there Mac "burn-in" software available?

Hi! One of the frustrations with refurbishing Apple laptops is that no matter how must testing I do before shipping, I seem to have a failure rate of about 10%, i.e. the hard drive is DOA when it arrives, the latent iBook video issue suddenly rears its head, the customer tells me the laptop will not power on, etc. I double-box everything, so I know it's not related to shipping damage. I imagine using the laptop personally for a period of time would help bring out some of these issues, but I sell so many machines that it is not realistic to do this.

My question: Is there any "burn-in" software available for Mac which "kicks the tires" on a machine and determines if components are near failure? Or if not, is there any comprehensive diagnostic software available? Things like the Apple hardware test and Tech Tool are great, but they never seem to alert me of issues I wasn't already aware of.

What do you do before shipping a machine to make sure it's 100%?

Thanks!

Answered! View the answer I have this problem too

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Hi there: Praying is good but I use TechTool Pro to test out computers I fix before turning them back to the client. I tell it to run the whole suite of tests then I run the component test for up to 50 cycles. It is put out by micromat. It really is a good product. Apples hardware test is a watered down version of it.

Good luck

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Pray. It's out of your hands. I also put a unique rubber stamp on parts I sell on eBay. I started that when I got parts back that I didn't send out. On one the serial number of the battery had been switched.

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As mactech says, running the apple hardware test is good, also with hard drives, simply verifying should be a good indicator. But as mayer says, a lot of components are not predictable.

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I'm A PC builder/seller/refurbisher, and what i do before i ship out any PC, is to torture test it (Run it at 100% for extended periods of time) this ensures system stability. One good way to do this is to run a pi calculation program, there are plenty of these around for PC, Mac, Linux, Ect. and set it to calculate to a million digits or so (Depending on the speed of the computer, this can take a fraction of a second (Newer 4-Core CPUs) to minutes (On say an iBook G4) this is a good way to test CPU joint reliability because it heats up under full load quickly) to test RAM, there is a program called CheckUp, (A Set Of Tools For Mac) and it has a great free program to test RAM built in. To Test The GPU run a 3D application for a few minutes (a good one is called "Cube 2, Sauerbraten" a free open source FPS for PowerPC macs) and run that at a high setting. I'm not aware of any programs that have a function that can test all of this in one, though.

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Awesome, thanks for all the info! I hadn't heard of any of those! I'll check them out!

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Checkup link: http://checkup.en.softonic.com/mac

the free version link is broken

"Cube 2, Sauerbraten": http://www.download-free-games.com/freew...

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Just a for-the-record here, the newest version of Cube, AssaultCube, is far better.

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