should or should not buy "apple care plan"?

[phuong]

i just ordered Mac Pro (with education discount). since i'm in Montreal, Canada, i'd be charged 14% of the total price, so i decided not to get the AppleCare plan from them. i figured if i ever gonna get it, i'd get it from, say, eBay, it'd be cheaper.

one more thing, i've never used a Mac before, but i can say i have moderate knowledge about computers and im pretty comfortable with them (at least on the PC side. i build my own PCs from scratch and from time to time, fix my friends'. i sure know where the "Any key" is on the keyboards )

in other words, i just wanna know if it worths spending some couple bucks more on "insurance" for this multi-thousand machine?

 

[WildCowboy]

Try searching the forums...this gets asked about once a day.

In short, it partly depends on how long you plan on keeping the machine. But I generally say that it's not necessary for desktop machines...they're easy enough to service on your own, especially if you're handy with computers.

But it really is a personal decision...is it worth it to YOU to mitigate the risk of hardware failure at the offered cost? There is no single right answer...

 

[Fotograffiti]

You have a year to decide. If you don't have the money or don't want to you can do it later since you have a warranty on it anyway the first year. It is correct that it should be less crucial being a desktop, but you can kind of see how it performs that first year and then worry about it

 

[generik]

Buy it from eBay, much cheaper.

 

[miles01110]

Buying Applecare is generally less useful for the desktops since they are, on the whole, much more reliable than the mobile machines. However, since the Mac Pro is brand-new and the problems (if there are any) haven't been worked out yet, I would buy it.

 

[sord]

I would get it - it may be easy to service, but what if the liquid cooling system breaks and shorts everything. Try fixing that yourself...

 

[WildCowboy]

I would get it - it may be easy to service, but what if the liquid cooling system breaks and shorts everything. Try fixing that yourself...

The Mac Pro doesn't use liquid cooling...

 

[apachie2k]

i always get pro care...i see so so many times, shyt happens...i wouldn't want to be out a Mac Pro cause i was to cheap to get pro care...

 

[sord]

The Mac Pro doesn't use liquid cooling...

Oh - I just assumed it was because my PowerMac Quad is. In that case I probably wouldn't get it then

 

[FFTT]

The hardest thing for someone who likes to tinker with their system is to
leave their system alone long enough to determine if everything is O.K.

Test run your system " AS SHIPPED " before you add ANYTHING.

Do not add RAM or Software OR any third party anything until you know
your basic machine is trouble free.

I would give it at least 24 hours without any shutdowns.

If you plan to partition your drive (s) or plan to re-install the OS
in a Custom lean install, this would be a good time.

Go to Applications/Utiliities/Disk Utility to set up your drives.

Run the hardware test CD, Set up your accounts,
one for Administrative ONLY and one SuperUSER for daily use.

Once you're up and running, it's time to download all the Mac OSX and application updates using System Preferences/Software Update.
You'll need to reboot a few times to activate some of these updates and that will also tell you if there are any problems.

At this point there should still be nothing on your machine that Apple didn't
provide.

All your Hard Drives and partitions should be showing on your Desktop.

If you purchased addtional RAM, now you can carefully upgrade your machine.

This step by step method helps you determine the cause of any problems.

If your system fails to boot or starts getting Kernel Panics after you install
RAM, you know what probably caused the problem.

Generally if a machine works when you buy it and keeps working trouble free
for the first 6 months, it will probably last forever.

Unfortunately, individual third party components DO fail.
Hard Drives, Optical Drives, Video Cards and RAM are easy to replace, but the cost for just one simple repair can exceed the cost of AppleCare.

If your business or personal life depends on that machine, I'd say that AppleCare
is worth it.

These are still new machines with a bunch of new components that may or may not develop problems over time.

The faulty 3rd party capacitors in Rev A iMacs did not show up until those machines had been in use for roughly 6 months.
The heat gradually caused those capacitors to fail.

One of my best friends has one.
Apple has already replaced his motherboard 3 times and because he purchased Apple Care and kept good records, it looks like he'll be getting a new Intel Core Duo 2.0 free this month under warranty.

Are you feeling lucky?

 

[phuong]

to be honest, im fed up with building PCs & taking care of it. this is why i wanna buy a solid machine that is stable and reliable, so that i can pay all my attentions to my works, and not the machine. i already configued it with 4GB ram and 750GB of HDD so i dont think there's anything more to add to it. i use it mainly for Photoshop. and im planning to keep it for about 1 to 1.5 year (i'll replace it when the next machine with Clovertown comes out)

and what FFTT just said is exactly what i was thinking. these machines are relatively new so anything could happen. plus in 1.5 year it'd probably sell easier with a 1.5 year of warranty left.

so i think i'm gonna buy it. question is, is there anything i should know before buying it? i just took a quick glance on eBay and saw a deal. he clearly describes it as "model M8850LL/A" and i dont know what it means. i know that Apple currently has quite a few different promotions like NAPP users, regular Educational, and the ipod rebate... I'm jsut afraid i'll buy one that doesn't match my Canadian Educational machine.