AppleCare for PowerBooks - Worth it or Wasted?

Starquake asks: "I am planning on purchasing a PowerBook in the near future. The choice between models largely depends on whether or not the cost of AppleCare is included. Of course the salesman at the Apple Store suggested I purchase AppleCare, but I am not sure about the cost/benefit ratio. Would the PowerBook owners on Slashdot please advise me on whether or not the AppleCare plan is worth the extra cost? What types of experiences have you had with Powerbook failures and replacements?"

Comments

Year warranty

[Dephex Twin]

Remember that all their computers come with a year warranty no matter what. During that year you can still buy the AppleCare and extend it out to the full 3 years. So you could theoretically see how you feel about it after a year and if you think AppleCare for two more years is needed.

I don't have a Powerbook, but I do have an iBook, and I've had some hardware problems with it. Every time I have had to take it in I had no hassle with parts replacement and it was totally free. So the care they do provide seems to be pretty good, at least in my experience.

A story:

[CptChipJew]

This doesn't have to do with a PowerBook (though I own one now), I still think it applies.

First off, your PB will come with one year of AppleCare. That extra charge is for 2 more years. That rule applies to all Apple hardware.

I bought my PowerMac and didn't purchase the extended AppleCare. One month before the warranty expired, my CPU's got fried. So I took it to the store, replaced them for free, and gave me a receipt.

Apprarently, with parts and labor this came out to an over $800 repair. I immediately purchased two more years of AppleCare.

BTW you can purchase it anytime during that first year. You dont have to buy it with the computer.

But anyways, I figured if Apple is going to charge that much to do repairs, you're better off paying a couple of hundred dollars than eight, especially considering repairs to portables are probably more expensive.

Re:A story:

[Anonymous Coward]

Here is a caveat: find out who the Applecare service will be done by first. I understand in the USA apple sends you a shipping box and you send it directly to them.

In my case, in Canada, the Applecare is done by the local shop (I can't send machines back to Apple, I can only send them to this shop, even if I didn't buy them there).

And... that leaves lots of opportunity to get ripped off. In my case the local place unilaterally re-wrote what was covered by the Applecare. Didn't matter what the documents I had from Apple said, it only mattered what they could come up with and print. Thus costing us $400 to get a monitor fixed, when we could have probably bought a new one from less.

Apple Canada was the typical "We don't have any control over the dealers" hands off. So we don't buy Applecare anymore. Their loss.

Hell Yes

[Rand Race]

I admin an office full of Macs, including about a dozen powerbooks of various vintages. I can't say it plainer than: Get The Freaking Warranty. They aren't bad machines, but they are expensive ones. One repair will repay your investment twice over at least.

I know from experience. I'm writing this from a TiBook 400 with 5 1-pixel wide colored lines running vertically across the screen. $1100 to fix it. Needless to say, I didn't approve the order (it's from our other office actually).

2 out of 5 tiBooks dead after first year

[Kalak]

I'm writing this from a tiBook borrowed from another department because my department now has 2 dead tiBooks, including mine. These two have no working screen, which costs $1240 *each* to repair from Apple. Since you can get a new notebook for less, we may not be bothering to fix them.

During the first year, the story was just as ugly. My tiBook went back 4 times for both screen and logic board related issues. Another co-worker in my department had his start smoking while it was on his lap! His had already been back twice and was replaced by Apple after the smoke. The replacement has been back twice. Titanium may be strong and light from a structural perspective, but it's not good notebook material. After the tiBooks were bought (and after the warranty ran out), we instituted a policy of buying the AppleCare on all Apple products.

Since then, our iBook has been back twice, despite being a year and a half old. The last return just got back. The logic board replacement would have cost $955 as it's a year and a half old. Look at the math and you decide.

You can wait to see if the new alBooks are better in quality, but by the time you find out you may be out of warranty if you don't by the extension.

One thing I've thought of is that back when Apple decided to become more of a "consumer oriented" product to try and shake their overpriced image, they not only dropped SCSI and OS support, they cut their warranty down to a year (the amelio years. I wish they would change this). If you think of it as buying the older quality of Apple at a higher price by including the extended warranty, then do it. My boss gets mad about having to buy a warranty, but I'd pay the price that would jump if they made a higher quality notebook. The 500 series would last through years of abuse.

I normally think extended warranties are a scam, but this is a requirement.

Here's the skinny:

[Johnny Mnemonic]

I used to work for Apple, as an Apple Genius in a retail store; I know the ins and outs of AppleCare very well. I'm admittedly weaker on international AppleCare, however.

Standard warranty, both desktops and laptops, is 90 days phone support and 1 year parts and labor. You may purchase AppleCare, for a varying price dep. on the model, anytime during that first year. Doing so reactivates the phone support (which otherwise expired at the 90 day mark) and continues the hardware+labor to 3 years from the purchase date. Purchasing AppleCare on year+1 day after the purchase of the unit is likely to do you no good; year+1 month almost certainly no good.

AppleCare travels with the unit, not the owner, so it persists through a resale. It expires 3 years from date of original purchase, naturally.

If out of warranty, desktops can be very expensive to repair, depending on the failed part. MLBs + processors are very expensive ($800-$1K); HDs are usually cheaper to replace yourself. Optical drives depend. However: iBooks and PowerBooks, out of warranty, are treated differently. All non-abuse repairs to iBooks cost $280, flat rate. All non-abuse repairs to PowerBooks cost $310, flat rate. That includes any and all parts; MLB, optical drive, HD, etc. Even LCDs--for instance, the horizontal bright line, dim backlights, etc. Now, abuse, or at least determination of abuse by an Apple agent, will change that amount very drastically--Powerbook LCDs are worth closer to $1300, abuse (either in or out of warranty, actually). The abuse qualification naturally gave me lots of argument--but I know it when I see it. A cracked LCD always is. A failed HD wouldn't qualify. A line across an LCD wouldn't qualify, and funky MLB stuff wouldn't usually qualify (as abuse). A drop or a liquid spill is abuse by definition.

Powerbook and iBook owners should be given this same price whenever talking to an Apple employee, be it over the phone or in person at an Apple store. Resellers are free to mark up those costs, and many do. However, for "bright horizontal line" guy in a previous post: either he talked to a misinformed Apple employee, and should talk to another one, or, more likely, talked to a misinformed or overcharging VAR.

As I said, international AppleCare has a number of wrinkles which I never learned very well. And I understood that selling AppleCare into FL was indeed illegal.

I'm afraid that this won't answer the original question: is AppleCare worth it? For that, one would need to know fail rates, which I don't think anyone knows, or has stated publicly. I sure never knew it, and no one that I worked with ever knew it. But those costs of repair should give you a good idea.

Re:it's all about odds

[Johnny Mnemonic]

i've never met a latop that i couldn't bust open and replace a hard drive or an optical drive.

I would guess that you've never repaired an iBook. Not for the faint of heart. Admittedly, a Powerbook HD and optical drive are easy to replace, but I don't know about finding the PowerBook optical drive aftermarket, and Apple won't sell you just the part, either.

btw--AppleCare would include coverage of the not easily replaced parts, such as the LCD and MLB, as long as those units were not "abused." And the MLB isn't replaceable by you, screwdriver aware or no. (unless you salvage old machines, I guess.)

Re:It's worth it when you need it.

[Daniel Dvorkin]

Technically, you're right -- but the neat thing about AppleCare, as opposed to most other "extended warranty" schemes that are really scams, is that Apple is very generous in their definition of what's covered. I have friends who treat their Apple laptops like absolute hell, and they always get fast, efficient, and most importantly, free repair on their machines through AppleCare. I mean, cracked cases and stuff like that -- clearly the result of abuse, but the AppleCare folks fix it without bitching.

Personally, I treat my iBook like a baby, and it's had very few problems; but the battery did die a while back, and I was very impressed with the service I got. The only other time I've ever used AppleCare was with a desktop Mac, years ago, when the monitor died -- most likely as a result of my very long-haired cat sitting on it all the time and getting hair in all the vents -- and again, I was quite happy with the service.

So in short, hell yes, get the AppleCare.