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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?"
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.
If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe. -- Carl Sagan
It's insurance. Decide if you want insurance.
Personally, I'd get extended AppleCare, and use that as a selling point when I unload it on ebay two years later.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
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.
Vonal Declosion
Sorry Charlie!
-n
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you play the odds. what are the odds that a something w/o moving parts is gonna break in a computer. in my experience, fairly slim.
things that break are typically HDs and optical drives. if you subscribe to this theory than there is no way Apple Care is worth it.
if you think that stuff like LCDs and motherboard will go bad with use and time than Apple care is probably worth it.
out of the 5 Apple computers i've purchased, i've never bought apple care and never had a non-moving part go bad on me.
at work i had a mac's built in NIC go bad, but it was within the one year warranty. i also had a power supply go bad, that wasn't under warranty. it cost $150 to replace. personally i think that if a non-moving part doesn't go bad within a year, it's unlikey to go bad within three.
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).
Insanity is the last line of defence for the master diplomat. But you have to lay the groundwork early.
I had a used Pismo with no Applecare and after about a week I busted one of the arrow keys. I had the little bit of aluminum that busted off so I called and they said it was out of warranty but send it in anyway. So I did and four days later a package arrived from a local apple shop. It was a new keyboard.
So that may not answer your question but I've had good luck with Apple.
My ibook died when out of warranty. Being a techy, I tried to troubleshoot it myself. So I tried various boot disks, resetting the pram, etc., attempting to boot to a firewire drive, even replaced the hard drive. No dice. Sent it to Apple, paid $400 and they fixed it and added a 90-day warranty. I'm pretty sure they replaced the board. If I had had AppleCare I would have just sent it to them in the beginning and saved a lot of time and frustration.
90 days is for phone support. You are covered for a full year for repair.
If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe. -- Carl Sagan
So what if they make money. They get bulk deals. They're not going to offer a product like this at a LOSS to themselves. Thing is that it's a gamble. Can you afford to pay repair costs or buy a new laptop 1 year later? Can your family afford to live without you if you're the sole provider if you die? Life insurance companies also make money off the Insurance they sell, it's why they are in business. Does that mean that you shouldn't buy Life Insurance?
I don't have a Powerbook, I have an iBook. So far AppleCare seems to be a hefty requirement if I am supposed to continue to be able to use this computer in the near future without going bankrupt on continuous repairs.
1. Harddrive broke down. Mailed it in to Apple, they sent it back. I thought the iBook was fine but it turned out to be still broken.
2. Sent it down to Holland and got a replacement iBook.
3. Harddrive broke down again a couple of months later. Got it replaced at a local shop after two weeks of waiting.
4. Harddrive broke down yet a third time! Got it replaced with in days.
5. Months after that the motherboard died! The screen started to become whacky and the local repair shop fixed it.
6. Had to return it once again to the shop because it showed up to be that the audio out jack was bad.
7. I'm about to return it a seventh time because it turned out that the replacement iBook I got back from Holland had some weird shit placed inside of the screen, causing a disturbing crack on the edge -- didn't notice it at first, but I'm doing it now because it's growing as time pass by.
Is AppleCare worth it? Yeah. If I need to take my iBook to the shop seven times a year, AppleCare could probably save me possibly thousands and thousands of dollars.
What's so bad about being lazy? What if there was a war and nobody showed up?
The company I work for has three of them running about.
One had a DVD that ate disks, started in the second year *grind* *grind* *gouge*. Apple Extended paid for itself there.
The second developed an issue with that ridiculous reset button in back, motherboard had to be replaced. I don't even want to know how much Apple Care saved me that time.
The third has run like a dream, never had a problem.
Paying $300 now may mean that in two years you don't have to spend $1,000 to get your laptop into working order again.
In two years, you could replace your current model laptop for $1,000 due to newer stuff being out and the inevitable price breaks in the PC industry.
It's insurance. Insurance is a losing bet. They make a profit on it. If they are making a profit, then it must be a loss for the buyers (as a group, of course).
The purpose of insurance is not to save money, it's to avoid disaster. That's why insurance on something like a house is a good idea - no because it won't cost you money, but rather so that you're not wiped out if your house burns down.
If you can stand the loss, you're better off in the long run not buying extended warranties. Yes, there will be times when something will break, and you'd have been better off having bought the insurance, but overall, you'll have more money in your pocket if you don't buy insurance on things you can stand (however painful) to lose.
My company has 10 iBooks we give out on a regular basis, so they see their share of abuse while moving from room to room and person to person. When we bought them, we talked about getting AppleCare but since we've never had it on other Macs, the management angle was to avoid spending another $3000 to support all of these.
Now, I know the company line that Ni-Cad batteries have no memory. I also have seen on 10 iBooks that if you don't follow good practices of fully charging the laptop and allowing it a few cycles now and then, you'll have 10 batteries with a life of 30 minutes or less within a year. So I've now replaced every battery in my iBooks because of this short-life problem. This IS covered by AppleCare. Free $129 battery if you call and explain your's has no life. In 3 years, I go easily see you going through two or three batteries.
And then...maybe gravity takes hold and one of these laptops happens to "fall." Well, AppleCare will cover the screen and most other parts, so long as physical damage is not evident (no cracked or shattered screen and plastic). We had an LCD completely wig out and fail after the warranty expired. The procedure is this...
You call Apple, and they charge you $50 to talk to them. Then, they decide it needs to get sent back, and you ship it on a credit card which has an estimate of what it might cost. Mine was between $400-800. Two days later I got the iBook back. Two weeks later I got the bill. $869 for a new screen, the repair labor, and shipping.
AppleCare might seem like a waste...and some warranty programs are. But if EVER you need it, you're saving a lot of money in the long run.
-Barkeep, a draft of your most hazardous brew, for the world is slowly stepping into focus, and I don't like what I see.
What happens if I spill a coke all over my open notebook and it ceases to function? Will you hook me up with a new powerbook and/or fix it?
No, that's probably covered under your home owner's insurance, if you have it.
OK, no thanks then.
AZspot
Early Titanium PowerBooks (15" before they called them that) in the 400 to 500 megahertz range G4 processor had problems with the screen developing always-on vertical lines. Apple will charge you around $800 to $1200 to fix this problem. Unfortunately, that's the depreciated value of those powerbooks at this point. Applecare would have taken care of this issue for $50. It took about 18 months before this problem developed widely and powerbook owners were able to corroborate stories that this problem was widespread. I've heard of keyboard-issues with the 12" models, but can't confirm that. My next powerbook will have AppleCare, as this is a piece of business equipment I can't afford to have not work perfectly all the time (kinda like a high availability server).
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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.
I am, and always will be, an idiot. Karma: Coma (mostly effected by
Definitely definitely for your Powerbook. While Apple laptops are pretty reliable (IMHO), anything portable is bound to be beaten and battered into a state of broken-ness. While the price is pretty steep for AppleCare, the service is really good and they will pretty much help you with anything. I have an iBook with AppleCare and it was worth it, considering my screen started blinking out a little while ago. Considering that the repair might have cost several hundred dollars to fix without it and I got AppleCare for about 200 bucks. Got it fixed in about a day.
Of course, if your machine never breaks, then you're probably going to think it was never worth it... but in any case, it will help keep that resale value high if you decide to get rid of it before the warranty is up.
But anyway, I think its worth it.
Sigs are for losers::
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.
--
$tar -xvf
It's a very nice deal. They have fantastic service. I've purchased AppleCare on all the Apples I've bought (two), and while I've only needed the repair service on the iBook, because the power connector failed (which was probably my fault, but it's a weakness in the design, and they didn't balk at all about repairing it).
On my G4, when I couldn't figure out how to get it back to life after a power glitch, I called AppleCare, someone answered within about a minute, and they were able to get me back up and running in another minute by telling me how to open it up and what little button to press on the motherboard.
I am not exactly a beginner, so the fact that I've been able to benefit from their phone support is pretty impressive. I really can't recommend them enough - they really do a nice job, and I feel like it's a bargain at $299.
I'd say go for it. I have an iBook and I've already had them replace the display cable and one battery, within one year. Apple's service has been amazing, less than 48 hour turnaround time. Now, I don't think these problems should have occurred in the first place, but you can probably expect something unexpected to happen, especially with new models. Consider that one repair will cost more than Applecare.
As another poster commented, you can try it out and then extend it for up to two more years anytime within your first year. This is what I did (didn't think I'd need it, at first) and this is what I recommend.
If you happen to go to University either as staff or a student, it may pay to check out your campus' computer shop. Here in Australia (not sure about the US) but the universities have an agreemen with Apple that all machines purchased through an AUC retailer automatically get 3 years warranty - no extra charge. I myself am getting an iBook in the next week or two from our campus' computer shop. Not only was it cheaper than the Apple online shop, but I effectively get 3 years of Applecare for free!
Yeah, I've dropped mine off a few tables and chairs, regularly carry it around by the screen and run around while it's tring to read something from the optical drive. Apart from the time I dropped a plug on the screen, it's still in great shape and people keep asking if it's new, lol. Says something for the strength of the design. Well, several things I guess.
My iBook went through: two hard drives, two lcds, four logic boards, two batteries, a power inverter and various and sundry other bits, all within its first year. All problems speedily repaired by Apple at no cost to me. Opting for Apple Care to extend the hardware coverage beyond the first year was something i didn't have to think twice about.
So, unless you think you're going to need telephone tech support beyond the initial 90 days -- which I never did -- I would advise you to see how it goes over the course of the first year and make your decision based on that. I'm told that Apple doesn't like it if you don't have continuous coverage, however, so if you do decide to go with AppleCare, make sure to purchase it before the anniversary of your powerbook's purchase.
Given that any single hardware repair on an out of warranty powerbook is $379, and the cost of 3 years of powerbook applecare is $350, even if you only need it once, it's a deal.