iBook & new HD Warranty Question

[MacPhreak]

Quick question: I need to stick a larger drive in my iBook, but it's still under warranty, and the HD is not a 'user serviceable' part to Apple. To whom do I go to get a new one put in? I am no less than three hours from the nearest Apple store, so that's a no-go, and I'm way out of my phone support period. I was thinking of taking the drive and the iBook to the local CompUSA, but I'm not sure about them... Too many peecee's in that place.

I have no problems doing it myself, expcept that, as I said, it's under warranty. I think I'm one of the few who has a G3 iBook still under the standard 1-yr warranty, and I'm probably going to put AppleCare on it before my year is up, so I can't just wait a few months to do it myself.

Thanks!

 

[Norouzi]

You'll definatily need to take it to an Authorised Apple Service Provider if you don't want to void the warranty. They are the only one's who can preform a HD upgrade on you iBook without voiding the warranty. I believe CompUSA is a service provider, but I have never used them myself. On the pluss side to be an Apple Authorised Service provider they will have had to have at least one of their tech's pass all the Apple service tests so the person making the upgrade should be knowlagable. Now that being said, I would not recomend replacing the HD in your iBook yourself. I used to be an Apple Tech and I can tell you that getting into the gut's of the iBook is not a fun time and without the service manual (which is only available from The Apple Service Provider Web site) I would not even attempt taking the iBook appart. There are alot of things that you wouldn't think of that need to be done to get to the hard drive not to mention about 50 tiny screws of different sizes and that all have to be taken out at the right time to get to the next layer of the iBook's guts.

 

[MacPhreak]

I called CompUSA a day or two ago...they want $140 to install it. Combine that with the price of the drive, the cost of AppleCare, and the resale value of the iBook, it makes absolutely NO economic sense to replace it. Add ~$100, and I can get a 12" Powerbook (EDU pricing...I'm a PhD candidate).

I have no problems doing it myself. I've taken many, many laptops apart, stripped down to the bare LCD to replace the screen, or remove the logic board, or the CPU stiffener. It doesn't intimidate me in the least. In fact, I've been supplementing my puny stipend by rebuilding Powerbooks. I've got the instructions to do it, too, step-by-step with oodles of pictures, I just want to keep my warranty intact, since I can't afford to fix it.

I'm especially worried now that the logic board repair program has been extended to my model of iBook. When I bought it, it wasn't included.

Looks like I'm going to be doing a clean install this weekend, from generic OS cd's, and skip all the pre-installed junk, and see how much room that saves me.

 

[Apmonia]

Do you need the hard drive in the iBook? Perhaps you can just purchase an external hard drive and skip the installation process to save the warranty.

Apmonia

 

[Norouzi]

Do you need the hard drive in the iBook? Perhaps you can just purchase an external hard drive and skip the installation process to save the warranty.

Apmonia

You beat me to my next sugestion.