Repair damaged macbook Worth It?

[benlee]

My brother's girlfriend spilled water on her blackbook. She sent it to applecare which quoted her a cost of around $700 saying the logic board, harddrive and optical drive where damaged. I have a couple questions:

1) How much would it be to do the repair myself?
2)Where is a good place to buy parts?
3) Is it worth it?
4) If she sold it to me would it be worth trying to bring it to applecare myself and get lucky with a nice genius?
5)How much would it be worth if i sold it?


Thanks for answers to any of my questions!

 

[devilot]

1) How much would it be to do the repair myself?

Er, the cost of parts? And time... lots of time. Especially if you've never done this sort of work before.

Keep in mind, if you botch it up-- it could be a total loss, or you could end up spending even more money trying to get that fixed.

2)Where is a good place to buy parts?

Most here would probably recommend ifixit.com.

3) Is it worth it?

Again, no one can answer that for you. Is your time, stress, the time and cost of buying/ waiting for parts worth it to you? How would you feel if you put out the money for the parts, spent hours trying to fix it, and then it still didn't work or perhaps got into a worse state?

4) If she sold it to me would it be worth trying to bring it to applecare myself and get lucky with a nice genius?

NO. Geniuses and Apple Care first check serial #s. Since that MB has already been brought in and "flagged" as customer accidental water damage, any other time you brought it in and a Genius entered in the serial # that info would be brought up.

 

[Sun Baked]

$700 from Apple ain't bad, the optical drive will likely be a little more pricey than you thought -- as will a logic board.

And Apple's price should fix it, a problem if you buy the parts on eBay and find out that something else is also wrong -- or get bad parts.

As you are finding out, the laptop repairs are rather expensive.

 

[0007776]

I don't think that you will save much by trying to do it yourself, on ifixit the logic board is about $550, so once you add in the cost of the other parts it will probably end up at least the same if not more.

 

[benlee]

yeah thats what i saw after checking prices. The problem is I have a MBP so wouldn't really be worth it for me to pay $700 for a laptop I would probably not use.

How much do you think it would be worth to sell?

Also, do you think it would be safe to put the memory in another MB? or would I be risking something?

 

[illmerlo]

Price Estimate For Damaged Mac Book Pro

A similar thing happened to me, water was spilled on my Mac Book Pro and the motherboard is now shot. I brought it into a local Mac place and they quoted me 1000-1400 plus labor for repair. I'm now looking to scrap the parts and they also gave me an estimate for $458...I think that is low but want to get a few other opinions, here are my specs:

Mac Book Pro purchased March 2008 with 2.6 ghz Intel Core 2 Duo and 6 gb of 667 ddr2 sdram, 17 inch screen and 200 gb hdd. Thanks ahead of time for your response.