another applecare question...

[Cindy]

I will soon be getting a new ibook (waiting to see if there are any upgrades). And I'm trying to decide whether or not to get applecare.
How many of you have bought brand new machines (laptops in particular) and needed applecare?
I know it's like car insurance -- we pay for it and sometimes never use it.

 

[cardiac dave]

While you can delay the purchase up until the 12 month mark, I believe that for the portables it just makes sense to get the applecare.

 

[aboutthat]

The applecare is about the price of one repair on it, considering it's a portable. I bought it for my PB 15" just before the year long window was up, and I'm glad that I did. I found one for about half the price on craigslist.org, definitely a good investment, so hunt around (or get a student to buy it!). I haven't used it yet, but for things like squeaky keys and a few dim spots on the monitor, I plan on using applecare for some maintenance on things I might otherwise just ignore.

If you have a portable, I think you'd be foolish not to, just with all the, well, portability and such

 

[wdlove]

I would highly recommend AppleCare. Have purchased ti with all my Mac's. It has more than paid for itself on my wife's PowerBook, several repairs.

 

[DarkNetworks]

I highly recomend it...i had problems with my iBook a few months after i bought my laptop...anyway, i've got a question about AppleCare too
If let's say u purchased a New laptop, it comes with 12 months of AppleCare.Then u go on to purchase the AppleCare to extend the coverage for 2 Years...what happens after that?What happens after the 2 years? Can u still purchase another Applecare to extend again? Or its like "no more AppleCare, you need to get a new system after 2 years?"

 

[eva01]

for laptops i recommend it extremely highly, hell for all Macs i recommend it

 

[aboutthat]

I highly recomend it...i had problems with my iBook a few months after i bought my laptop...anyway, i've got a question about AppleCare too
If let's say u purchased a New laptop, it comes with 12 months of AppleCare.Then u go on to purchase the AppleCare to extend the coverage for 2 Years...what happens after that?What happens after the 2 years? Can u still purchase another Applecare to extend again? Or its like "no more AppleCare, you need to get a new system after 2 years?"

I'm pretty sure you're just fresh out of luck then...in theory, you could perpetuate the life of your computer indefinitely if that were the case. Not like you'd really want to, but you could. It just wouldn't make a lot of sense for Apple to have to keep supporting older product lines and have everything available under the terms of the applecare.

 

[Macky-Mac]

I highly recomend it...i had problems with my iBook a few months after i bought my laptop...anyway, i've got a question about AppleCare too
If let's say u purchased a New laptop, it comes with 12 months of AppleCare.Then u go on to purchase the AppleCare to extend the coverage for 2 Years...what happens after that?What happens after the 2 years? Can u still purchase another Applecare to extend again? Or its like "no more AppleCare, you need to get a new system after 2 years?"

you can only buy the 2 year extension once....making a total of 3 years of coverage that's available to you

 

[Macky-Mac]

I will soon be getting a new ibook (waiting to see if there are any upgrades). And I'm trying to decide whether or not to get applecare.
How many of you have bought brand new machines (laptops in particular) and needed applecare?
I know it's like car insurance -- we pay for it and sometimes never use it.

over the years I've had 7 new Macs between home and work. Only one of those had a hardware failure that happened during the 2 year warranty extension that Applecare provides.......that was a CD burner that died just a couple of months before it would have been out of the extended warranty period.

Buying Applecare for those machines would have cost around $1500 and the total repairs that would have been covered amounted to less than $300.....so it's worked out better for us not to have bought Applecare.

Basically with Applecare you're gambling that your computer is going to fail and that the cost of repairs will be steep

 

[Cindy]

I thought applecare was just a contract warranty thing. But, it's software??
I did some shopping around via the internet for applecare and found a couple of sites that offer it for 179.00 for ibook applecare.

 

[XNine]

I thought applecare was just a contract warranty thing. But, it's software??
I did some shopping around via the internet for applecare and found a couple of sites that offer it for 179.00 for ibook applecare.

It comes with additional hardware testing software. Applecare does not take care of software. That's what a Genius is for.

 

[Cindy]

So, when I'm buying applecare... I'll be buying my computer from my local mac store NOT directly from the apple store on line or anything.
I planned on buying applecare from the place on line that is selling it for 179.00.
This is the same coverage isn't it? I don't necessarily need to buy it from the place I buy the computer from?

 

[wdlove]

So, when I'm buying applecare... I'll be buying my computer from my local mac store NOT directly from the apple store on line or anything.
I planned on buying applecare from the place on line that is selling it for 179.00.
This is the same coverage isn't it? I don't necessarily need to buy it from the place I buy the computer from?

I prefer to have a relationship with my local Apple Store also.

As long as it's an Apple product, then yes the coverage should be the same. You can purchase Apple care from any Apple reseller.