Mark Boulton

24 Responses to “To Applecare or not?”

1. 
   Steve Staskiewicz said on: October 5th, 2005 at 10:02 pm

   I would get Apple­Care.  It is def­in­itely worth the extra cost.  I bought a Power­Book two years ago and just after the com­pli­ment­ary one year war­ranty (about 4 days after) was up, I had a prob­lem with the combo drive on it.  I sent it off and had it back in per­fect con­di­tion within 3 days.  I know the iMac is built dif­fer­ently, but you have to plan for the worst.

2. 
   Andy Hume said on: October 5th, 2005 at 10:11 pm

   What about that prob­lem with the capa­cit­ors that expand and break each other? 

   Can’t rememmber the details, but any­one (Rut­ter?) — if you’re read­ing this: fill us in. Is Mark’s G5 in the ‘at risk’ sector? 

   Andy.

3. 
   Mark Boulton said on: October 5th, 2005 at 10:15 pm

   That’s the thing. I know my iMac is one of the first revi­sions. In fact I’ve just had the logic board replaced (as part of one of those recall things) as I was hav­ing known video issues. 

   Thing is, what other ‘issues’ are going to come out of the wood­work just after my war­ranty expires?

4. 
   Erik V. said on: October 5th, 2005 at 10:34 pm

   I’m a fan of Apple Care for such an expens­ive product. My iBook’s logic board recently went kaput; if I hadn’t had Apple Care, it would’ve cost almost as much as a new iBook to replace!

5. 
   whackaxe said on: October 5th, 2005 at 10:35 pm

   I bought a mac mini at the end of june. at the end of august (the 25^th to be pre­cise) it broke down. on the same day i took it to the repair shop. 

   I’m still wait­ing for them to call me. 

   the min­imum delay was 31 days, so now its been 10 days since they should at least be work­ing on it.

6. 
   Ryan Heneise said on: October 5th, 2005 at 10:46 pm

   I also bought Apple­care when I bought my Power­book, which is my primary busi­ness machine. So far noth­ing has happened to it, but it is extremely nice to have the peace of mind know­ing that if some­thing goes wrong my down­time will hope­fully be minimized. 

   But that’s a power­book, which has the poten­tial for a lot of bad things to hap­pen to it, since it’s being tossed around all day and some­times even packed onto air­planes and such. For a desktop… I don’t know. Might not be as worth­while, but I sup­pose it depends on how much risk you can tol­er­ate. If it’s your #1 machine, and you can’t work without it, then by all means, I would recom­mend pro­tect­ing your new asset. If it’s your home­work box, then, meh… maybe not.

7. 
   Andy Hume said on: October 5th, 2005 at 10:46 pm

   Yeah, I believe the issue I’m think­ing of is a video problem. 

   In fact a little Google brings up: 

   http://www.pbase.com/johncoggi/image/40667989

   …so it looks like this may not be an issue for you. Yay!

8. 
   Brady J. Frey said on: October 5th, 2005 at 11:17 pm

   I would recom­mend it—I’ve had some funk with the 3 imacs in our office, the war­ranty paid for itself already in each of them.

   I’ve never done it with towers, those were easy for us in house geeks to tweak and man­age as needed. 

   In the end, I always recom­mend the war­ranty for imacs and server equipment—it’s a lifesaver when you need it.

9. 
   Virginia said on: October 5th, 2005 at 11:39 pm

   You have to con­sider your upgrade cycle, too. I know that because I’m expect­ing my G5 Power­mac to last me for 3–4 years, I got the Apple­care — I didn’t get it for my Power­book, which is a refurb from an older line that I know I’ll only have for 18 months — 2 years. 

   I’ve had Apple­care for almost all my Macs over the years — prob­ably at a total cost of over $1000AUD — and it becomes worth it as soon as one laptop logic board dies, or 1GB of RAM bursts into flame just afer you’ve paid your tax bill…

10. 
    Jon Clark said on: October 6th, 2005 at 12:44 am

    My one and only deal­ing with the Apple­care crew was a bit of a mixed affair. I’d had a G4 400 for two years so there was still a year of the war­ranty to go. The prob­lem arose when I first switched to broad­band many moons ago and the machine couldn’t get a signal. 

    At first I thought it was the ISP who was at fault — not least helped by the fact that the Apple­care people on the phone assured me it simply couldn’t be any­thing wrong with their won­der­ful Mac after con­duct­ing a few rudi­ment­ary diagnostics. 

    It went on for almost a fort­night, the ISP blamed the Mac, Apple­care blamed the ISP. In the end I took it to my local Apple­Centre who imme­di­ately dia­gnosed a faulty Eth­er­net card. 

    Apple were soooo snotty when I informed them of this but even­tu­ally — yes, I still had to pester them — agreed to take the machine back and fix it. 

    Whilst the machine was away another lady from Apple­care rang and apo­lo­gised pro­fusely for all the prob­lems I had had. She simply couldn’t under­stand why the machine hadn’t simply been taken away in the first instance to be fixed. Since then, I’ve had no fur­ther prob­lems with it. 

    It was nice to get a machine that was two years old fixed under war­ranty des­pite all the hassle. But the mes­sage seemed to be that you have to have the right per­son on the phone if you want a decent ser­vice, like a lot of places.

11. 
    Steve Williams said on: October 6th, 2005 at 1:31 am

    If it’s your primary busi­ness tool, I’d say take Apple­care to min­im­ise the risk and know you have a guar­an­teed solution. 

    But my ‘non com­mer­cial’ think­ing has always been once you’re out of reg­u­lar war­ranty, why go to a main or author­ised dealer for a service/fix? 

    I hap­pen to know a local-ish (Bris­tol) guy that fixes all things Apple for a liv­ing, so I’d prob­ably give it to him to work on as I could sur­vive with my Win­tel box in the meantime.

12. 
    FriedGeek said on: October 6th, 2005 at 2:33 am

    You should pop for the Apple­Care. A buddy of mine just gave me his G4 iBook two months ago. After two months of bliss, logic board dies. It’s nearly two years old so I’ll have to come up with $300 to fix it. Even though other G4 iBook users have had the same logic board fail­ures that G3 iBook users had.

13. 
    brad said on: October 6th, 2005 at 12:09 pm

    As a rule I never buy exten­ded war­rantees for any­thing, but I would make an excep­tion in this case. I didn’t buy Apple­care for any of my pre­vi­ous Macs, and in each case I regret­ted that decision because they all developed sig­ni­fic­ant hard­ware prob­lems after the ini­tial war­ranty expired. So when it’s time to replace my cur­rent Power­Book G4, I’m get­ting Apple­Care. I love Macs, but either I’ve had bad luck or else Apple has a qual­ity con­trol prob­lem. All my recent Macs (Mac Clas­sic, iMac, iBook, and this Power­Book) either came with or developed ser­i­ous hard­ware defects, so I’ve come to expect it.

14. 
    Melvyn said on: October 6th, 2005 at 12:48 pm

    How come so many Mac com­puters have prob­lems? I thought there would be more prob­lems on a PC…I use a pc and for me, Mac rep­res­ents high quality!

15. 
    brad said on: October 6th, 2005 at 3:53 pm

    Melvyn, I share your concern ;-) 

    Apple is bril­liant at indus­trial design and the Mac oper­at­ing sys­tem is fantasic (I have not had a single crash in OSX in about four years now, although to be hon­est I could say the same for Win­dows 2000 Pro­fes­sional and XP Pro­fes­sional). But I do think they have a prob­lem with hard­ware qual­ity con­trol. I read one sur­vey that repor­ted a 40 per­cent fail­ure rate in the first gen­er­a­tion G5 iMacs. 

    PC makers have their own share of hard­ware issues, but I’ve owned two IBM Think­Pads that have been incred­ibly reli­able and trouble-free, far more so than any of my Macs. That won’t stop me from buy­ing Macs in the future, but I do think Apple­Care is a wise investment.

16. 
    Paul Livingstone said on: October 6th, 2005 at 4:01 pm

    I bought Apple­care along with my iMac G5, and while I haven’t needed to call upon it yet, there’s no doubt in my mind that I will have to before the 3 years is up. 

    Trust me, I’ve seen lots of Apple hard­ware prob­lems. If it was a Power­book or iBook, I’d insist you bought it (hell, I’d drive to your house and camp in your front garden until you did). How­ever, because it’s an iMac, I’d only recom­mend it.

17. 
    Graham Sanders said on: October 7th, 2005 at 2:56 pm

    All depends if you know one of those rare spe­cies called a Mac tech­ni­cian who can cheaply fix your com­puter. Luck­ily I do and for a prob­lem with my G5 Imac whioch Apple quoted as being over ?300 to fix the Mac tech­ni­cian was able to rem­edy for a mere ?15. 

    If you want his num­ber Mark I can provide it to you. He’s Cardiff based and also doesn’t mind answer­ing all sorts of Mac related queries. 

    For me it’s like tak­ing your VW car to a VW gar­age or going to a small spe­cial­ist firm. 

    Apple chan­rge far too much and they’re sup­port is pants!!!

18. 
    Noel said on: October 11th, 2005 at 3:54 am

    Thanks for remind­ing me. I just got myself one right after I read your post.  I have a PBG4 12inch and the dis­play showed a hair­line pixel thin ver­tical line.  I had a great ser­vice exper­i­ence (read more: http://www.noeluvia.com/archives/000426.html) so I got one just in time.  I’m see­ing some signs of deteri­or­a­tion on my PB anyway.

19. 
    Mark said on: October 12th, 2005 at 4:04 am

    Yes! Buy it. I bought it for my last power­book and the screen died twice. Giot it fixed fast and free both times. It is worth the $$ if you plan to keep that G5 around.

20. 
    Mark Boulton said on: October 12th, 2005 at 8:15 pm

    Thanks for all your com­ments. I took the gen­eral con­sensus and bought the Apple­care. With any luck I won’t need it, but bet­ter safe than sorry.

21. 
    James Penrose said on: October 13th, 2005 at 9:33 pm

    Helped me out too as I’m look­ing at a new Power­book soon (now with Apple­Care added!)

22. 
    Paul Le Comte said on: October 19th, 2005 at 12:00 am

    Go the AppleCare. 

    Lit­er­ally the day after my extene­ded war­rantee kicked in, my power­book needed a refit, phew, talk about dodging the bullit.

23. 
    Richard Rutter said on: October 20th, 2005 at 3:20 pm

    Seems like you bought your iMac about month before I bought mine. I’m about to get Apple­Care simply because I haven’t got much faith in the reli­ab­il­ity of Apple’s con­sumer hard­ware — I’ve had issues with my iBook and, as Andy Hume men­tioned earlier, issues with the iMac requir­ing a logic board replace­ment thanks to dodgy capa­cit­ors.

    That said, the ser­vice I’ve had from Apple­Care so far has been dread­ful. The trick is to buy Apple­Care but go to your local Mac spe­cial­ist and get them to fix a prob­lem under Apple­Care cover.

24. 
    Alvin said on: January 12th, 2006 at 11:46 am

    Hi. Hows does Apple­Care work? Do you pay this monthly or its just one time payment? 

    I’d like to ask, sup­pos­ing I bought my Mac from another coun­try (with the usual 1 year war­ranty only it’s honored there) then I came back to my own coun­try. I’d like to have war­ranty without going back to the coun­try where I bought it. Could I just buy Apple­Care in my coun­try and I will have 3 years war­ranty which in the event that the Apple parts don’t work they will replace or ser­vice it here within in those three years. Is this how Apple­Care works? 

    Under nor­mal use, does Apple­care replace parts (apple parts) without charge, without dia­gnostics charge too? It’s all free?