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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
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.
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.
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
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 $1300, abuse (either in or out of warranty, actually). The abuse qualification naturally gave me lots of argument--but I know it when I see it. A cracked LCD always is. A failed HD wouldn't qualify. A line across an LCD wouldn't qualify, and funky MLB stuff wouldn't usually qualify (as abuse). A drop or a liquid spill is abuse by definition.
Powerbook and iBook owners should be given this same price whenever talking to an Apple employee, be it over the phone or in person at an Apple store. Resellers are free to mark up those costs, and many do. However, for "bright horizontal line" guy in a previous post: either he talked to a misinformed Apple employee, and should talk to another one, or, more likely, talked to a misinformed or overcharging VAR.
As I said, international AppleCare has a number of wrinkles which I never learned very well. And I understood that selling AppleCare into FL was indeed illegal.
I'm afraid that this won't answer the original question: is AppleCare worth it? For that, one would need to know fail rates, which I don't think anyone knows, or has stated publicly. I sure never knew it, and no one that I worked with ever knew it. But those costs of repair should give you a good idea.
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$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.