That's like saying that the drivers of expensive cars aren't interested in cars. The majority of computers users just like car users get someone else to do all the techie stuff. Be it a friend, relative or a shop.

I had to do this on my iMac, I followed a video guide on youtube, it was a hairy and scary thing to do and took about 40 mins, but was entirely successful. The scary part was that there are all these folk who say that you cannot do it cos its a mac etc. and I lost my bottle.. A few weeks later, the same disk error happened to a friend, I was called out to do it, and second time round it took about 10- 15 minutes, mainly because I was not scared this time round - take heart - do it!!

Ewen

You're quite right. I like to be able to fix my car; I like to be able to fix my computers. Others are happy to pay for these services. No problem.

In reply to a post by gilesjuk:

Laptops are what people buy and use now.

They can be almost as bad.
We had a 15 month old £600 laptop die due to a motherboard failure recently.
Impossible for me to source components and after convincing currys to repair it free of charge they weren't able to get hold of the parts. Went for recycling in the end!

Once you pluck up the courage to replace the HDD it is a fairly straightforward process. The video and instructions on the other referenced site gave me enough confidence to go for it. I used to build my own Windows PCs for years but eventually gave up on Windows. The biggest problem with the 27" iMac is the bulk and weight of the LCD panel. Took me just under 30 minutes. In hindsight I should have gone for an SSD.

As another poster pointed out the cost of Apple parts is expensive. I recently upgraded the memory on my system and sourced the SODIMMS from Crucial at a fraction of the cost of the Apple product.