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AppleCare, Extend it or not?

Duffinator

Duffinator

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Sep 3, 2007
348
0
130 miles NE of Cupertino
My one year warranty is about to expire and I'm thinking about extending it for two more years (something I rarely do). There is an Apple store about 4 miles from my home and I recently used them to replace my super drive under warranty and the service was excellent.

I have an iMac purchased new in March 2009 and it's my first Apple computer although not my first apple product. My question is how difficult is it to replace the typical items that fail, optical drive, power supply, fan, and HDD? I've replaced these items in PC based computers and while no expert I can handle simple repairs. Any OS issues will be more of a challenge. Are the parts that fail readily available from places like NewEgg or Mac Mall?

TIA
 
I'd always recommend buying AppleCare for a laptop, but I don't think it's worthwhile for a desktop. If you've had a bunch of problems during the first year of ownership it's not likely that they'll go away as soon as it hits the one-year mark, but if you've been problem-free I don't think it's worth the money.

I have an Early 2008 iMac, and when its warranty expired, I upgraded the hard drive. Doing the replacement myself would've voided the warranty, and the shop wanted something like $120 plus the cost of the drive. It has been out of warranty for almost a year now and I haven't had to take it in to the shop for anything.

Bear in mind that Macs are quite a bit harder to disassemble than PCs. You need to use extra-large suction cups just to get into the aluminum iMac models.

OS issues aren't worth troubling yourself over, since you can always fix them yourself for free. We can help you sort out most problems, and for the rare software problems that can't be fixed no matter what we try, backing up and reinstalling works fine.
 
AppleCare for desktops in the US has the added benefit of allowing for onsite repairs. If an AppleCare telephone agent can identify a hardware issue with your iMac, Mac mini, or Mac Pro, you can have a technician come out and fix your computer.
 
On the 5 devices my wife and I own, we've had AppleCare on all of them and used it for 3 of the devices. Granted they're all mobile. I'd probably buy it for an iMac though based on high logic board repair costs.
 
bear in mind only apple engineers can order official apple parts, but generic parts can be had from various sources. also, apple parts can sometimes be found on ebay from broken machines people are selling off

also, if you want apple to do a fix for you it will be the cost of the part + either roughly £50 or £100 labour charge (for england, anyway) depending on the complexity of the repair.

personally i'd get it, just for the fact almost everything is on the logic board of a laptop, which would set you back at least £500-£600 to get fixed. but things like hard drives, ram, superdrives, etc are cheaper and could potentially be fixed yourself
 
ashjamben said:
personally i'd get it, just for the fact almost everything is on the logic board of a laptop, which would set you back at least £500-£600 to get fixed. but things like hard drives, ram, superdrives, etc are cheaper and could potentially be fixed yourself
Click to expand...

Unfortunately, the iMac also has a logic board, so if that runs into trouble, you will be kicking yourself for not buying AppleCare. Fair warning.
 
Thanks for everyone's comments. I've had just one issue in the first year, the super drive. The replacement was defective and my local Apple Store did not catch it before I brought it home. So back it went for round two. Nice thing is the store is five minutes from my home and the turn around was about five hours each time. I guess I'll probably buy it.
 
BlueRevolution said:
I'd always recommend buying AppleCare for a laptop, but I don't think it's worthwhile for a desktop. If you've had a bunch of problems during the first year of ownership it's not likely that they'll go away as soon as it hits the one-year mark, but if you've been problem-free I don't think it's worth the money.
Click to expand...
+1
Duffinator said:
I guess I'll probably but it.
Click to expand...
You'll what?
 
Happy I had it.

My black MacBook developed a crack on the edge of top case (keyboard panel) after owning it for about 1.5 yrs (some 8 months ago). The binding piece that separated from the main body eventually broke off and left an actual narrow strip of opening so I recently had to call Applecare. Well... to make long story short... they replaced the whole top case including the keys and touch pad.

I'm not sure whether they'd replaced it had I not had the extended Applecare that this problem being a "known problem" of the last gen non-Unibody MacBooks. I'm happy I got mine fixed w/o hassle. I have to say though with this economy, personally, it's not as affordable as a few years ago to fork out a few hundred bucks just for warranty; things are a bit different these days.
 
The extended warranties are always a crap shoot. I rolled the dice this time around but usually don't. This is the second extended warranty I've purchased in the past two years and the only two I've purchased in my lifetime. The first was on my 58" Panasonic plasma TV.
 
I recommend it for most Apple products. Just last month I had the SuperDrive replaced in my 27-month old iMac. Well worth the cost of AppleCare. But don't buy it from Apple unless they call you & offer a very good deal. Check LA Computer Company or eBay or, even, Amazon.
 
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