On Jan 9, 2006, at 5:15 PM, b3 <b3studios at gmail.com> wrote: > okay, so it looks as if tomorrow, one way or another, i am ordering > my family a new laptop. > I just have a question as to if all of you think that AppleCare is > worth the extra price? > > i did have a problem with my first iBook, but that came within the > first 4 months, and it eventually was replaced by Apple, under the > standard warranty. > > If i order a new one tomorrow, is AppleCare worth the price?
Rick, You don't have to make the AppleCare decision until just before the first year is up. That said, though, I really do recommend AC for laptops because, as was mentioned before, they get more bumping around. Apple expects that with laptops and they have bent over backwards the times I have sent my iBooks in. They would sometimes replace things on the machine that were clearly damaged from misuse. They even sent me a free iBook a few weeks before the three years was up. I got three years out of the first iBook. (Granted it had gone back several times for various reasons.) Then they sent me a brand new one the very week the new models came out. I just LOVE Apple. [I cannot honestly swear that all the things wrong with the device were entirely manufacturing issues. Hey, it was a laptop! If it fell off a table once in a while or rolled down a flight of concrete stairs on occasion, that's to be expected, right? ::-) ] Another tactic was hinted at earlier, but I will put some flesh on it for you: About a month before your warranty is up put it on Ebay. I watched iBooks with my configuration for several weeks and I noticed that if you had all the packaging and parts, it was in perfect working condition, and still looked pretty new you could get 70% to 80% of the original cost of the machine. That means that if you kept a machine for 4 years you would pay the same and have a four-year-old machine. If you went the new-machine-a-year route you would pay the same annual cost, never have a machine more than a year old, and never have to buy AppleCare. You could use what you would have spent on AppleCare to replace the RAM that won't move to the new machine. Works for me! Oh, one more point (and this is very important). Don't forget to buy your laptop every year from a locally-owned Mac store. ::-) j. -- Jonathan Fletcher jfletch at newmediaconstco.com | The next meeting of the Louisville Computer Society will | be January 24 at Pitt Academy, 6010 Preston Highway. | The LCS Web page is <http://www.kymac.org>. | List posting address: <mailto:macgroup at erdos.math.louisville.edu> | List Web page: <http://erdos.math.louisville.edu/macgroup>
