Your thoughts on AppleCare?

I'm not a big fan of warranties, but if I'm going to spend $2,000+ on a computer then it might be worth it. What are your thoughts on Applecare? Is it worth it? Have you had good or bad experiences with it?

Gotta love the warranties, i got mine for free, since the warranty on my mac mini that i bought was used. so i got a free $150 plan. but im glad cause if anything happens, no worries. But id deff buy one if you were gettin any laptop, regardless on how careful you are, always something happens

i just had a good experience today. i knokced my ipod into a sink full of water. went to the apple store with my applecare info. said that it just got a little wet and then stoppped working. i walked out with a new 5g (video) ipod for free!

it definetly is worth it. If you computer ever does break, (which hopefully it never does) then it would pay for itself. Most of the repairs that Apple charges are outrageous and AppleCare is less. You'll thank yourself for it, and if it never comes to that, just know that you brought a good computer!

Pierre

kaidomac said:

I'm not a big fan of warranties, but if I'm going to spend $2,000+ on a computer then it might be worth it. What are your thoughts on Applecare? Is it worth it? Have you had good or bad experiences with it?

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I have been repairing macs for a few years now, and I have to say if you are the type to stick with a computer for more than 1 year, get the applecare. I have seen way too may laptops, and iMacs have either the LCD screen or the logic board go just after the 1 year is up. The service you get with apple care is really great, the only thing I have to say is BACK UP YOUR DATA. I know this should go with out saying, but the only problem when sending your system back to apple is they will very often restore the system back to the factory defaults without letting you know. Unless you specifically ask to have you data backed up by apple they will do everything they have to, to return you a system that works as good as the day you bought it.

sluzniak said:

I have been repairing macs for a few years now, and I have to say if you are the type to stick with a computer for more than 1 year, get the applecare. I have seen way too may laptops, and iMacs have either the LCD screen or the logic board go just after the 1 year is up. The service you get with apple care is really great, the only thing I have to say is BACK UP YOUR DATA. I know this should go with out saying, but the only problem when sending your system back to apple is they will very often restore the system back to the factory defaults without letting you know. Unless you specifically ask to have you data backed up by apple they will do everything they have to, to return you a system that works as good as the day you bought it.

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Well, I'm convinced it's worth the investment, plus it's not too bad with my student discount in effect. I originally was going to get an iMac Intel with a 500 gig hard drive, but aside from the 3-4 week wait, I'm sure running maintenance on it would take an excessive amount of time and backing it up would be pricey too. I believe I'm going to get the 250 gigger and then use an external 250 gig hard drive to do both file backup and Carbon Copy Cloner image files. That way, if either drive fails, I'll have a backup, or like you said, if I send it back in and they torch the drive, I can restore it quite easily. Thank you all for the words of advice!

I personally have had mac desktops since the apple IIc and very little goes wrong with them. on the macs i own the only macs that i bought apple care for are the laptops since they are being moved around all the time and more prone to damage vs sitting on a desk all day not moving. But you do a have a year to decide, if i was you i would get the computer and wait a year and if in that year you have no trouble then i would say its not worth the apple care but if you have any problems in the year then i would go out and buy the apple care. I would say most problems are going to happen in the first 6 months just make sure you test everything in the first year like all the USB, firewire ports burning a DVD/CD ext.

of course with applecare on machines.. considering you are spending about 2k.. for 169 bucks?

that's less than 60 bucks a year..

thelox714 said:

of course with applecare on machines.. considering you are spending about 2k.. for 169 bucks?

that's less than 60 bucks a year..

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Came out to $119 with my student discount, not bad. It will mainly be my wife's computer (for now...just wait until they release Adobe CS Universal!), so I figured it was a good idea. In the meantime I can still hack up my PCs all I want