I know nobody has a crystal ball, but does Apple usually continue to drop prices on their refurbs? I would hate to buy one today and learn they drop another $100-$200 next week.
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Refurb Pricing
- Thread starter gman901
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They do not drop pricing of refurbs until the next generation comes out. So, the price for the 2011 models will not drop until there are refurbished 2012 models.
'drop prices on refurbs' might be ambiguous. refurbs are cheaper than new, if that's what you mean. the 2011 MBA will be most likely available refurbished in the coming weeks, for close to $200 off.
not sure what you meant, but the 2010 refurb did not in price until about 1 or 2 weeks ago, well after the 2011 came out. however, i think the drop was done in anticipation of the 2011 MBA coming as a refurb, and when that happens the refurb'd 2010s will most likely not drop further.
a 2010? i'd say it's very safe. they JUST dropped in price. i seriously doubt they will drop more soon, if not till the 2012 model appears.
It depends on which model you get, but I would assume the basline model ($699! woot). In that case, only if you will only use it for relatively light stuff. (web browsing, email, netflix, youtube, MS office, music, etc.) It would be more than sufficient for that. But not for more CPU-intensive stuff, like games and photoshop. It will run older games, but not anything too graphics-demanding.
Yes. They are now at a 25% discount to the original price, which is about Apple's maximum discount (they usually don't last long enough to be dropped further). That said, I would not be surprised to see 2011 refurbished models start appearing on the website in the next few weeks. The October 2010 models showed up the day after Christmas, and in larger volumes by the end of January.
The holiday shopping season might muddle things a bit, though I doubt many people buy refurbs as gifts (the shipping box is the only box you get). However, with all the people returning models with Toshiba SSDs or LG displays, and the wake-to-sleep issues reported on some models (similar to last year's models), I wouldn't be surprised if there is a decent supply that needs to be sold. The back to school season is over and the holiday season is more than a month away, so October would be a good opportunity to release some refurbished 2011 models.
Typically Apple discounts current models at 15% in the refurb store (the iPad 2 being the notable exception with only 7% discounts).
Thanks for all the replies! Should I buy the upgrade to Lion for my Air? Are there any notable user improvements over SL? Also, should I set up my Air with just the latest updates to SL or immediately boot up and go straight to the App store and upgrade (before setting up my own data).
I bought my SO the $699 base model. Immediately upgraded it to Lion (it's free, follow the link from apple.com for recent purchased Macs). After the upgrade we installed other software, etc.
Whether or not this is the 'best' way to do it, or if the Lion upgrade is 'notable' is a religious debate I'd prefer to steer clear of. This worked great for us, and as it's her first Mac I wanted her on Lion to start with rather than forcing new conventions on her after she got used to SL.
$699 is an incredible deal for last year's base MBA for someone who is just using it for basic email, web browsing and office apps. I suspect it'll be quite awhile before the 2011 is discounted that steeply.
Both have been working just fine for me on my 2011 MBA. Moved the licenses over from my 2010 MBP with SL.
That's good to know! I was wondering about parallels mostly because they keep pushing version 7 to be compatible with Lion. I would like to save a few bucks and use Parallels 6 if it works.