Advice needed on what to inspect when buying a used Mac

[cptpowder]

Im interested in buying a used MacBook, MBP or MBA. What should I inspect besides turning it on and overall general condition? RUn a diagnostic on it or what?

 

[Tomorrow]

Check the battery life/health, and make sure it isn't swelling.

Check functionality of all the ports.

Check that the speakers aren't blown out.

Inspect the screen carefully for dead/stuck pixels or signs of a bad video adapter.

Check the hard disk for errors.

Make sure you can read and write optical media.

Inspect the power cord carefully for fraying or hot spots.

 

[r0k]

There is a dealer in my neighborhood that sells used Macs. He overcharges when compared to what you would pay on ebay but I like having a store to "stand behind" my purchase. The problem is he also has a "no refunds" policy. Another problem is that when I download and run geekbench on his machines, they consistently score far below the scores listed on primatelabs.ca for the equivalent machines. OTOH, when I'm in the Apple store, if I download and run geekbench on any machine, it scores within a few percent of the scores listed on primatelabs.ca. I don't consider geekbench scores to be that representative of what I do, but they do provide a way to compare the performance of different machines or more importantly to spot a machine that isn't quite running up to par.

hope this helps...

 

[ThemacNub]

The best advice is to run system profiler so you can check to see if the computer is as advertised spec wise

 

[durruti]

have a good sniff and make sure it doesn't reek of anything unpleasant.