MacBook Pro Repair or New Machine?

Over the weekend I was involved in a car accident. Fortunately everybody walked out of the car.

The one thing that did not make it was my Late-2011 MacBook Pro. The impact caused my bag to be thrown from the trunk. Amazingly is still powers on and boots up fine. I brought it to the Apple Store and received a quote for $755. Lots of exterior damage. Should I just buy a retina MBP?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

jm300 said:

Amazingly is still powers on and boots up fine. I brought it to the Apple Store and received a quote for $755.

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On the positive side…it sounds like it's working properly. You didn't exactly say what was broken or not working. Or if the damage is mostly cosmetic.

On the downside…that $755 repair estimate is a lot. And for a Late 2011 MBP probably not worth getting it repaired. You could take the same $755 and put it towards a new computer…and maybe sell the 2011 MBP on eBay for as much at it will get in its current condition. And this total would minimize the amount of actual cash you would have to add to the budget.

HTH,

- Nick

p.s. This is assuming insurance won't cover any of the damage.

Lodge a claim on your insurance company. They will decide.

pigoo3 said:

On the positive side…it sounds like it's working properly. You didn't exactly say what was broken or not working. Or if the damage is mostly cosmetic.

On the downside…that $755 repair estimate is a lot. And for a Late 2011 MBP probably not worth getting it repaired. You could take the same $755 and put it towards a new computer…and maybe sell the 2011 MBP on eBay for as much at it will get in its current condition.

HTH,

- Nick

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Thanks! Part of the bottom is bent, there is a dent, screen doesn't close all the way, trackpad only sometimes works, the top is scuffed, and I think I saw a wire sticking out of the bottom somewhere. There might be more damage too.

The guy at the Apple Store said that it makes sense to go with the flat rate.

How much could the 2011 MBP probably go for?

harryb2448 said:

Lodge a claim on your insurance company. They will decide.

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It was a rental car. Apparently the rental insurance doesn't cover the damage of personal items. Still waiting to hear if something else will cover it or at least part of the damage.

Will give Apple lots of credit though. For getting hit by a semi it is amazing the thing still powers on.

jm300 said:

How much could the 2011 MBP probably go for?

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I have absolutely no idea (too many factors to really give an accurate estimate).

You basically have to put it on eBay…give a really detailed description of what does & doesn't work. Lots of photos of the damage. And then see what happens.

But if I REALLY had to try to give an estimate. I would think that since it still mostly works…and is just pretty "fugly"! I would think that it should at least get $200-$250. Any more than this would be a bonus. This is assuming it's a 13" model. If it's a 15" model…maybe a bit more.

- Nick

pigoo3 said:

I have absolutely no idea (too many factors to really give an accurate estimate).

You basically have to put it on eBay…give a really detailed description of what does & doesn't work. Lots of photos of the damage. And then see what happens.

But if I REALLY had to try to give an estimate. I would think that since it still mostly works…and is just pretty "fugly"! I would think that it should at least get $200-$250. Any more than this would be a bonus. This is assuming it's a 13" model. If it's a 15" model…maybe a bit more.

- Nick

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Thanks for the info! Here are some pics.

jm300 said:

Thanks for the info! Here are some pics.

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Thanks for the photos. It looks MUCH MUCH better than I was expecting without photos. It may get more on eBay if you decided to sell it.

- Nick

jm300 said:

It was a rental car. Apparently the rental insurance doesn't cover the damage of personal items. Still waiting to hear if something else will cover it or at least part of the damage.

Will give Apple lots of credit though. For getting hit by a semi it is amazing the thing still powers on.

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I may be mistaken but homeowners insurance will cover losses owing to a car accident. What I mean is if you have an item stolen from your car or if your computer is damaged owing to an accident the loss may be covered by your homeowners insurance. Back in the day my car was stolen but my possessions in the car were covered by my homeowners insurance. It's worth a call to your insurance company.

i wouldn't bother just sell it for parts you can get a macbook air right now and no i am not talking the new one thats due out in april thats stripped of its good processor and replaced with a pentium m piece of junk.

Home contents will cover it, or should, if you are with a reasonable company.

harryb2448 said:

Home contents will cover it, or should, if you are with a reasonable company.

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LOL Harry, an insurance company being reasonable? Yeah, they're about as reasonable as the US Internal Revenue Service that collects our taxes! ;P

pigoo3 said:

Thanks for the photos. It looks MUCH MUCH better than I was expecting without photos. It may get more on eBay if you decided to sell it.

- Nick

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Thanks! Overall, it really handled the impact well. Built extremely well!

Thanks everyone! Now that the new MacBook Pro has been announced, I'll probably just go with the older one.

Going to purchase an External Hard Drive and backup the data from the old machine using Time Machine. Is that the best way?

I wholeheartedly agree with your decision to back up. Had the damage been worse you may have lost everything.

As for backing up, in my mind you have two options and to decide which is best for you you need to understand the differences.
Time Machine (TM) does constant incremental backups of your entire HD including the OS. But it is not formatted like a "normal" external HD. The only way you can restore or delete files is through the Time Machine interface, ie no drag and drop and you cannot boot from it.

A cloning app like SuperDuper (SD), Carbon Copy Cloner (CCC) or ChronoSync (CS) will enable you to have an accessible duplicate of your HD and OS that you can boot from, either your own laptop in case of a crash or another compatible laptop in case of loss.

Personally I have both. I partitioned a 1Tb USB HD into two volumes of 500Gb each. An easy exercise to do with the native Disk Utility. One half has CCC and the other TM.
You can also avail yourself of several "Cloud" based backup systems for insurance but remember the time required to restore from a cloud based backup could be huge unless you have a lightening fast connection.

Amen to everything that Rod mentions above.

I use SuperDuper religiously, plus I have Time Machine running and I am a very active and pleased Dropbox user. I also use CrashPlan for longer-term backup.

If I lose anything with this approach, my problems will be a lot bigger than a broken computer.

Thanks everybody! Looks like the organization I am with wants to opt for the repair. It doesn't make much sense to me but I guess this is their process.

jm300 said:

Looks like the organization I am with wants to opt for the repair. It doesn't make much sense to me but I guess this is their process.

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You never confirmed (when I mentioned earlier) if this is a 13" or 15" MacBook Pro. But if it's a 13" Late 2011 MBP…spending $755 to fix it is a bad call in my opinion. If it's a 15" MBP…then maybe it's a coin-flip.

If this "organization" is an insurance company…I totally understand that you got to do what they want to do. And in the end…if that's what they want to do…you still end up with a computer just like it was before the accident.

- Nick

pigoo3 said:

You never confirmed (when I mentioned earlier) if this is a 13" or 15" MacBook Pro. But if it's a 13" Late 2011 MBP…spending $755 to fix it is a bad call in my opinion. If it's a 15" MBP…then maybe it's a coin-flip.

If this "organization" is an insurance company…I totally understand that you got to do what they want to do. And in the end…if that's what they want to do…you still end up with a computer just like it was before the accident.

- Nick

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Sorry about that. It is a 13" MBP.

It looks like they might be okay going with the Retina 13.3". My only concern is the 128GB hard drive but I don't want to seem greedy with my employer and ask for the 256GB.

jm300 said:

Sorry about that. It is a 13" MBP.

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Thanks for confirming.

jm300 said:

It looks like they might be okay going with the Retina 13.3".

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I'm not sure I understand what you mean?? If this organization prefers to repair the computer. Late 2011 13" MBP's did not have a retina display. So repair's with a retina display I do not think is possible.

- Nick