I just wanted to give a little first hand experience for those of you who are on the fence of whether or not to purchase the Apple Care Warranty.
I have a 2 year old Macbook. Never had a problem and have loved it... since last week. I got the dreaded gray screen with folder - a tell tale sign that your harddrive has crashed.
I called the Apple Store nearest to me and got an appointment in one hour. I walked to the Genius Bar, told them my problem, and was greeted with a very friendly and knowledgeable person who agreed with me. He said it is almost certainly your HD. Laptops are brought everywhere and go through a lot of wear and tear. Until solid state drives come down in price and become the norm, spinning hardrives are simply bound to go sometime. Its nature.
He did a couple of checks and then walked to the back, got a replacement harddrive, and did the replacement in front of me. He reloaded the OS and told me to just plug in my Time Machine drive and follow the directions. I was in and out in 1 hour with a new harddrive.
I went back home. Plugged in my Time Machine and waited 2 hours. Time Machine completely restored my computer to the way it was before. EVERYTHING was the same, absolutely everything as far as I can tell. All my files, all my settings, all my programs loaded back perfectly. I didn't have to reinstall anything, I didnt have to re-punch in serial numbers (except for Final Draft because the software sucks).
All in all, my experience with a harddrive crash was a little inconvenient (I lost 3 hours of time), but my life is completely restored. No crying, no pictures or memories lost forever. I didnt have to send my computer off and I had a complete fix in less than a day. I also didn't pay any more money out of my pocket.
And I have Apple to thank completely.
Now, if Apple just figures out to fix Time Machine so that the original backup files still work after a restore, I would be even happier. I had to reconfigure Time Machine after I restored... oh well.
I have a 2 year old Macbook. Never had a problem and have loved it... since last week. I got the dreaded gray screen with folder - a tell tale sign that your harddrive has crashed.
I called the Apple Store nearest to me and got an appointment in one hour. I walked to the Genius Bar, told them my problem, and was greeted with a very friendly and knowledgeable person who agreed with me. He said it is almost certainly your HD. Laptops are brought everywhere and go through a lot of wear and tear. Until solid state drives come down in price and become the norm, spinning hardrives are simply bound to go sometime. Its nature.
He did a couple of checks and then walked to the back, got a replacement harddrive, and did the replacement in front of me. He reloaded the OS and told me to just plug in my Time Machine drive and follow the directions. I was in and out in 1 hour with a new harddrive.
I went back home. Plugged in my Time Machine and waited 2 hours. Time Machine completely restored my computer to the way it was before. EVERYTHING was the same, absolutely everything as far as I can tell. All my files, all my settings, all my programs loaded back perfectly. I didn't have to reinstall anything, I didnt have to re-punch in serial numbers (except for Final Draft because the software sucks).
All in all, my experience with a harddrive crash was a little inconvenient (I lost 3 hours of time), but my life is completely restored. No crying, no pictures or memories lost forever. I didnt have to send my computer off and I had a complete fix in less than a day. I also didn't pay any more money out of my pocket.
And I have Apple to thank completely.
Now, if Apple just figures out to fix Time Machine so that the original backup files still work after a restore, I would be even happier. I had to reconfigure Time Machine after I restored... oh well.
