<p>Might have to do an emergency replacement of D’s Mac. She’s had a white loading screen since yesterday, and has tried a multitude of do-it-yourself fixes. She is taking it to the Geniuses but I am not hopeful. She has only had the computer 3 years but she uses it heavily, so maybe I shouldn’t be too disappointed if it has to be replaced.</p>
<p>My question, though, is assuming we do have to replace it is there a big difference between buying a Mac in the Apple store as compared to buying online? I seem to recall that we ordered the present Mac online because she wanted to upgrade the memory. But I could be wrong about that.</p>
<p>Is it still under AppleCare? If so, they should restore it to a usable condition.</p>
<p>As far as I can tell, there’s no difference in going online compared to buying from the store except that you have more options online and you have to wait for it to get built and shipped.</p>
<p>No matter where you buy her replacement, be sure to have ask for her education discount. (Assuming she’s still in school.) She will need to show her picture student ID in the store or have .edu email address online.</p>
<p>I guess what I’m asking (as a pretty non-computer-knowledgeable person) is, how important are the custom options? D is not majoring in anything that requires the capacity to run big programs. Does she really need a faster processor/more memory/etc.? Or are the custom options really worth the additional expense, and, given that she needs her computer yesterday, the time that it would take to order one?</p>
<p>And AppleCare expired a few months ago, of course.</p>
<p>I had a hard drive crash on my 4 year old Macbook and Apple not only changed the hard drive, they didn’t charge me even though my Applecare had expired. While I have since replace that Macbook, it still lives on with my son almost 6 years later!</p>
<p>A 3 year old Macbook still has life left in it.</p>
<p>I’m a software engineer and my MacBook Pro is five years old. I could probably use it for another five years. Several years ago, laptops started getting faster and faster while software didn’t grow to use up that processing power and capacity. So people are keeping their computers far longer now than they used to and it’s affecting Intel revenues and has just about killed AMD.</p>
<p>The additional options can be nice if you have a specific need. If you need to run Virtual Machines, extensive graphics, big games, or crunch Genomes, than more is better. If not, then the middle-of-the road machines should be fine. An SSD is nice to have though a big-cost item. It makes bootups and application launches faster.</p>
<p>If she needs it right now, I’d go to the store and buy it. I’d also bring the old laptop and see if they would repair it for free as a goodwill gesture. If they won’t, then at least you could get an estimate on what it would take to fix the problem.</p>
<p>There’s also the possibility that it could be a silent recall issue that they would fix for free. We’ve had seven free repairs on silent recalls on MacBook Pros that have all been video (nVidia) issues. Four of the repairs that they did were for machines that weren’t under warranty.</p>
<p>My last repair, a few months ago, was for the bulging battery problem on my almost 5-year-old notebook. I brought in the computer and the battery. They took one look, went out back, gave me a new battery for free and that was it. What other company will give you a free battery on a five-year-old system?</p>
<p>I brought in our 2010 iMac that had been recalled for faulty Seagate hard disks. This was within the last month. The system was out of warranty but they sent out recall notices to customers and swapped the disk at no charge. The hardest thing was bringing it into the store. The 27 inch iMac is not something that you want to move around often!</p>
<p>snowball, can they do that at the Apple store? That would be great if they could get it running. I am planning for the worst, though. </p>
<p>The only time I have I have dealt with the Apple store geniuses is when D dropped her ipod video–this was probably six or so years ago–and it stopped working. The genius bar guy said they did not open ipods and work on them in the store, nor could they send mine out to be repaired. My only option was to trade in the non-working one for a discount ($25 or so) on a new one.</p>
<p>D should be headed to the Apple store in about an hour; we’ll see what they say.</p>
<p>My local Apple store does repairs and can turn systems around overnight. They couldn’t do that when they opened though. They used to send everything out and it would take five days. The folks at the Genius Bar have a lot of diagnostic tools to determine what the problem is and sometimes problems are software, hardware, settings, corrupt files, etc.</p>
<p>There are a bunch of things that consumers can do to rule out problems like booting the hard disk on one Mac to another Mac via a FireWire cable. Some people go to MacForums or Apple’s Support Forums with a problem and they’re given technical things to try to diagnose problems. Some people do it this way while others just go to the Apple Store to let them figure it out.</p>
<p>Thanks BCE. She did look online last night and tried some things–turning the power off and on holding various keys down, unplugging everything and restarting (which didn’t fix the problem)–but she didn’t want to try anything too drastic for fear of making the problem worse (and she has some work she’s hoping can be saved, too, which she didn’t want to accidentally erase). Fortunately her college town (city) has an Apple store. If she was at home, we’d have to drive about three hours.</p>
<p>Have her take it to the apple store and see what they say.</p>
<p>My one co workers ipod was smashed by her son by accident. They do not open them because they say that once you take it apart and put in a new screen you are warping its integrity. INstead they sold her a refurbished one for half price.</p>
<p>My sisters macbook screen stopped working and they offered her a flat rate of 250 to fix it - 100 flat rate labor and 150 flat rate parts i believe. It wound up needing a new screen and one or two other things.</p>
<p>Yes, repairs are done at the Apple store. Once they tell your daughter if it can be repaired, she can try to get a discounted rate if they don’t offer up front. Have her play the poor student card Really though, Apple usually is good about making the customer happy, at least every time I have dealt with them.</p>
<p>Well, the bad and no-so-bad news is that the hard drive needs to be replaced. The estimate is about $250, which is much better than a new computer. The bad news is that they can’t save anything, and they say it can be 2-5 days before it is ready. I am hoping that it might actually be done tomorrow, though–they told her to leave the computer and they would call her in 1-3 days with a definitive answer about what was wrong (at first they thought it was either a cable that attaches to the hard drive, or the hard drive itself), but they called her before she had even left the parking lot to say that they had replaced the cable, and that didn’t fix the problem.</p>
<p>I assume your daughter doesn’t back her computer up? There are companies that can retrieve data, but as I recall it can run around $600! I have a tech that does work with my husband’s office that was able to get data off a dead HD on a dell, but when I gave him mine from my Mac, he wanted to know if I dropped it off a building as he couldn’t get to anything!</p>
<p>We changed the HD on my white Macbook ourselves and it really only took a few minutes. Bought a HD at the local computer store for $40, 2 different screw drivers in sizes we wouldn’t have around the house and upgraded the ram while we were in there. I am guessing your daughter doesn’t want to tackle that herself and I don’t know if the newer Macs are as easy to change. I quick google search will let you know.</p>
<p>Unfortunately HD crash so regular back-up is the only way to save data.</p>
<p>This is a five-minute repair with a $50 hard disk from Best Buy. They would also install the latest revision of your operating system and probably include the latest version of iLife for your operating system - that can take a while but it runs mostly unattended.</p>
<p>Hopefully she has all of her files backed up to a Time Machine drive. If not, she should consider buying an external USB drive to do regular backups of her system. I always plug my MacBook Pro into my Time Machine drive when I get into the office and I’ve had to use my backup drive a few times.</p>
<p>Edit:</p>
<p>You need a Torx T6 screwdriver. I bought a Mac repair toolkit to replace the disk in my MacBook Pro (took 3 hours!).</p>
<p>You can generally find repair videos for MacBooks, MacBook Pros and iMacs on YouTube. You just need to get the model right.</p>
<p>The diagnostic procedure is a little harder though.</p>
<p>If you ware still looking to buy I found that getting the Mac from amzaon worked for me because I saved sales tax and shipping was free (and the price was the same as the education discounted one.)</p>
<p>It’s worth the $250 to have people who know what they are doing fix the computer (at least if they do it by tomorrow–it might be a different story if they really do take 5 days). We are a fairly techno-phobic family. That’s why I’ve had Macs since the 1980s. And I hadn’t even thought about the operating system. We actually bought her computer the day before Apple introduced Snow Leopard (we were clueless). We bought the Snow Leopard disc and installed it and it was a mess. D called Apple and they talked her through uninstalling it (this was when she was still in HS and 3 hours from the closest Apple store). The plan was to take it to the Apple store and have them do it but that never happened. So that would be a bonus if they install the latest system (which I think is now not even Snow Leopard).</p>
<p>As for backing up, negligent on that count, too. Fortunately what she’s lost is mostly notes for two big research papers, but not the papers themselves. Two weeks from now, this would have been a much bigger problem.</p>
<p>I think we are going to hold off on buying the new computer, but Amazon is a good thought. Although since D is a student, she gets an educational discount; that might make buying directly from Apple a slightly better deal.</p>
<p>If you have Discover card, you can get 5% cashback with shopdiscover by buying online direct from Apple. That is on top of educational pricing but of course with state sales tax. You probably get a little break going this route compared to Amazon depending on your state sales tax rate. It also works with refurbished machines if you don’t mind those and save a little bit more.</p>
Really though, Apple usually is good about making the customer happy, at least every time I have dealt with them.</p>