A Couple Quick Questions

[kuebby]

I'm buying a used MBP in the next couple days and have a couple questions.

1. Am I getting a good deal? I'm pretty sure I am based on refurb, etc. It's a CD 2ghz, 2GB, 80GB, and AppleCare through 5/09. Price is $1350.

2. It's a local deal and I'm meeting him (probably at Starbucks). I'd like to run a diagnostic program to make sure the computer is A-ok. What's a good diagnostic utility?

3. What's the Apple site where one can search for a serial number to get information about the machine?

Any other information anyone would like to other is appreciated.

 

[steamboat26]

I'd say you are getting a decent deal, you could get a faster C2D Macbook pro for about an extra $500 (maybe less), but the speed difference is negligible. The real difference would be in battery life. For a machine with 2 gigs of RAM and Applecare, you are getting an pretty good deal.
I'm not sure exactly what you mean when you say you wanna get info about the machine from the serial number. Apple's support page has a box where you can enter your serial number, and it will tell you how many days of Applecare it has left.

EDIT: if you just wanna check the HD, the Disk Utility in the Utilities folder should be able to do that.

 

[siurpeeman]

i think it's a fair deal. you can look up the serial number on the bottom left of apple's support page.

 

[Makosuke]

As said, looks like a pretty decent deal, but the only thing you can do with the serial number is type it into the support thing and see how much applecare is left.

As for checking it out, if you want to do it on the cheap, ask the seller to bring the install discs and run the Apple Hardware Test off of that--that will at least tell you about anything really obvious wrong with it.

If you want to be a little more thorough, you could buy a copy of TechToolPro (can be downloaded and burnt to disc so you don't have to wait) and run that to do a full hardware scan.

It's FAR from foolproof, but it'll at least point out anything seriously wrong, like a failing hard drive or screwed up RAM or something. Be warned that a thorough scan will take quite a while, and neither of you may be big on sitting around in Starbucks for an hour or two while it checks the entire hard drive surface.

 

[kuebby]

That's pretty much what I was looking for. Thanks all.