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free macbook upgrade if bought shortly before a refresh?

W

wickedawesome31

macrumors member
Original poster
Jun 14, 2008
79
0
hey guys,

As we all know, apple will be releasing the montevina macbooks as early as july. I am going to college in the fall and I am playing the waiting game, like many other students. I decided that if they don't release it by the second week of august, I would go ahead and buy a current, yet still amazing macbook.

Here's my question: is there a time frame where apple would upgrade my macbook if I bought the current product and they released the montevina macbooks shortly after? For example, if I bought my macbook the second week of August, and they begin selling the montevina macbooks around two weeks later. Does apple upgrade you if you buy shortly before a refresh?

Thank You!
 
I'm playing the same waiting game, but I have no confidence in Apple replacing a Santa Rosa with a Montevina laptop for free. They would be taking a substantial loss. The only people buying MacBooks now are those who aren't aware of the imminent refresh, or don't care either way.
 
If you bought it within 14 days of the upgrade, then you can return it to the store, and then buy the new one with the return money.
 
alphaod said:
No they don't; as long as you get the one in the same or more price point, not restocking is charged.
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Yes they do, from Apple's return policy on their website:
Apple will assess a 10% restocking fee on any opened hardware or accessory.
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Link
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TwinCities Dan said:
Isn't the restocking fee 10%, that can be pretty significant for a large purchase... :confused:
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It can be significant, around $100-$150 if I did the math right, but there potentially could be major changes in CPU speeds and possibly more cores, which would be worth the extra $100-$150.
 
alphaod said:
Well they didn't charge me restocking. :p
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Lucky you, they didn't charge me either, but my situation was different. My MacBook suffered a HD failure on day 13 that I had it, but since it took 10 days to get to me because of the shipping, it was actually day 23. And since I added a mini-dvi to vga adapter in the purchase, it was technically a BTO purchase, so I couldn't swap it in store, and it took some time with the Apple Store manager talking to some guys higher up in the corporate chain convincing them to allow the return even though it was beyond what they felt was 14 days. In the end it was a purchase of a new computer and a return of the other, the manager also gave me a $50 discount off of the new one because it took almost 2 hours in the store for what he felt what should have been a 20 minute transaction.
 
So is there a significant difference?
I just bought this two days ago and it's a 2.4Ghz with 4GB of RAM.

I use it for web, music, and occasionally music and photo editing.

Will I notice the difference?
 
We won't know until the new MacBooks are released. So until then, nobody knows (well, a select few higher up in Apple know). But chances are, the difference won't be noticeable.
 
well thanks for filling me in everybody. it sounds like im going to have to buy it and keep it in the box for a few days just to make sure. haha :)
 
Zaeyde said:
So is there a significant difference?
I just bought this two days ago and it's a 2.4Ghz with 4GB of RAM.

I use it for web, music, and occasionally music and photo editing.

Will I notice the difference?
Click to expand...

I think it's safe to assume that the next MBs will top out with a 2.6 penryn cpu and montevina chipset. For most uses it will be about 10-15% faster, nothing dramatic. The x4500 graphics in montevina will be a bit faster than that at rendering 3d games, but still nothing compared to dedicated graphics cards. The x4500 does implement x264 and vc1 video decoding in hardware, which would speed up/lower cpu usage during video playing, but it remains to be seen whether apple will write drivers for it; current x3100s have hardware mpg2 decoding but apple doesn't use it either.
 
ihabime said:
I think it's safe to assume that the next MBs will top out with a 2.6 penryn cpu and montevina chipset. For most uses it will be about 10-15% faster, nothing dramatic. The x4500 graphics in montevina will be a bit faster than that at rendering 3d games, but still nothing compared to dedicated graphics cards. The x4500 does implement x264 and vc1 video decoding in hardware, which would speed up/lower cpu usage during video playing, but it remains to be seen whether apple will write drivers for it; current x3100s have hardware mpg2 decoding but apple doesn't use it either.
Click to expand...


Alright. So far, everything seems instantaneous. The only thing that actually takes time is transferring from a hard drive, but even that is about %400 faster than my PC.

Programs load in a blink, and I rarely see the "beach ball."
 
advice, if you have a opened box return and dont want to pay the 10% just tell them you have a defect and they will just give you a new one. works 100%
 
SchneiderMan said:
advice, if you have a opened box return and dont want to pay the 10% just tell them you have a defect and they will just give you a new one. works 100%
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Ya, but if he doesn't have a defect then he won't get that deal, and the quickest exchange would be in store.
 
is the restocking fee only for a return? or does it include exchanges? would seem if you are w/in 14 days, open or no, its an exchange, not a return, and maybe not subject to the 10%

also. and they may no longer do this but when i bought my g4 AGP 350 (yes, thats Mhz), they bumped the speeds to 400/450/500 (from 350/400/450) within a couple weeks. I called them (very politely) to see if they had any policy about recent changes, etc...and the CSR volunteered to either send me the price diff between the 350 and the 400, or i could send my tower back and get a 400 (guess which i chose?) :)


..
check was in the mail and in my hands within 3 weeks.
 
ben.mcmahan said:
is the restocking fee only for a return? or does it include exchanges? would seem if you are w/in 14 days, open or no, its an exchange, not a return, and maybe not subject to the 10%

also. and they may no longer do this but when i bought my g4 AGP 350 (yes, thats Mhz), they bumped the speeds to 400/450/500 (from 350/400/450) within a couple weeks. I called them (very politely) to see if they had any policy about recent changes, etc...and the CSR volunteered to either send me the price diff between the 350 and the 400, or i could send my tower back and get a 400 (guess which i chose?) :)


..
check was in the mail and in my hands within 3 weeks.
Click to expand...
With most cases, an exchange involves a problem of some sort, so in those cases there wouldn't be a 10% restocking fee. But what I am suggesting to do is a return and new purchase, like an exchange, but not actually one. It is also Apple's way to get a little bit of money from somebody pulling this off.
 
ihabime said:
I think it's safe to assume that the next MBs will top out with a 2.6 penryn cpu and montevina chipset. For most uses it will be about 10-15% faster, nothing dramatic. The x4500 graphics in montevina will be a bit faster than that at rendering 3d games, but still nothing compared to dedicated graphics cards. The x4500 does implement x264 and vc1 video decoding in hardware, which would speed up/lower cpu usage during video playing, but it remains to be seen whether apple will write drivers for it; current x3100s have hardware mpg2 decoding but apple doesn't use it either.
Click to expand...

OS X doesn't take advantage of the GPU for video playback. So yeah, the X4500 is useless anyway.

Besides, the GeForce 8400M GS that Apple SHOULD be using can do 10x more and is more than twice as fast on slower CPUs. Apple should just suck it up and eat the $20 off the profit and give everyone dedicated graphics.
 
mosx said:
OS X doesn't take advantage of the GPU for video playback. So yeah, the X4500 is useless anyway.

Besides, the GeForce 8400M GS that Apple SHOULD be using can do 10x more and is more than twice as fast on slower CPUs. Apple should just suck it up and eat the $20 off the profit and give everyone dedicated graphics.
Click to expand...

AMEN. no reason not to throw a ****ty card in there...
 
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