new vs. refurbished
Quick question: does anyone have any feelings about new vs. refurbished machines?
My old (dead as of Monday night!) iMac was a Summer 2000 500 DVSE. Ironically, I was one of the first to have the 'pixellation' issue that a number of the DVSE's had, and I ended up with a replacement machine less than a week out of the box. Well after 3.5 good solid years (minus the internal battery dying a year ago) of use, I'm now without a machine. (Ok not entirely true, but my school has agreed to let me use my classroom laptop temporarily so that I can still get work done at home.)
Needless to say, to repair the iMac would be 500$, to replace with same machine would be about 550$ because of this I'm looking at upgrading to a new machine.
I've been reading the posts on desktop vs. laptop and I'm still deciding, but I really like the portability of the laptop. For what I do, email, word processing, internet, presentations, grades, a bit of graphic work with Quark, Photoshop, etc, I dont think that the hit in speed from desktop to laptop is that big of an issue. Especially since I am going up from 500mhz.
**My biggest question is the whole new vs. refurbished issue. As money is an issue, I would like to go with the refurbished, being able to get a bit more for my dollar. After my issues with the iMac I would definitely go with the extended APP.
Anyone have any thoughts on this issue? Or can recommend an idea for a solution that I haven't thought of?
Thanks for your help.
My old (dead as of Monday night!) iMac was a Summer 2000 500 DVSE. Ironically, I was one of the first to have the 'pixellation' issue that a number of the DVSE's had, and I ended up with a replacement machine less than a week out of the box. Well after 3.5 good solid years (minus the internal battery dying a year ago) of use, I'm now without a machine. (Ok not entirely true, but my school has agreed to let me use my classroom laptop temporarily so that I can still get work done at home.)
Needless to say, to repair the iMac would be 500$, to replace with same machine would be about 550$ because of this I'm looking at upgrading to a new machine.
I've been reading the posts on desktop vs. laptop and I'm still deciding, but I really like the portability of the laptop. For what I do, email, word processing, internet, presentations, grades, a bit of graphic work with Quark, Photoshop, etc, I dont think that the hit in speed from desktop to laptop is that big of an issue. Especially since I am going up from 500mhz.
**My biggest question is the whole new vs. refurbished issue. As money is an issue, I would like to go with the refurbished, being able to get a bit more for my dollar. After my issues with the iMac I would definitely go with the extended APP.
Anyone have any thoughts on this issue? Or can recommend an idea for a solution that I haven't thought of?
Thanks for your help.
Comments
generally with refurbished gear, if there is going to be a problem you'll know about it in the first month of usage, As far as I know, all refurbished machines come with a year full coverage warranty, so if something would be wrong, you'd know right off the bat.
www.powermax.com is a great place to look for used mac products
www.smalldog.com is a great place to look for refurbished mac products
I think the major difference in Powerbooks is that it may come in a brown box vs. the full photoed snazzy boxes.
Also had to have the bottom RAM door cover replaced because it was missing a hard rubber foot. Wobbled like a drunk old hag when you used it. They wanted $100 for it because it's not a warrantied part, if you can believe it. Talked them down from their drug high on that one, though.
And the case was also marred up a fair bit, like it was rubbed along a desktop or something.
First and last refurb purchase.
Originally posted by torifile
Go for a refurb with a 1 year warranty if you can find one. Apple's got 'em and the others that were mentioned above also have them. For all intents and purposes, they'll be good as new.
my thoughts exactly
Power Mac G5
These products are new and unopened units.
Power Mac G5 1.8GHz/512MB/160G/SuperDrive/PCI/GeFr5200 -- $2,099.00
(although not much less than the dual 2GHz referb)
Previous Generation iBook G3 (Dual boot, OS X/OS 9 configurations) These products are new and unopened units.
"Previous Generation and Refurbished Products:
Listed below are great deals on Previous Generation iBook G3 and eMac products as well as quality Refurbished products. These Previous Generation and Refurbished Products are covered by Apple's One-Year Limited Warranty, and the AppleCare Protection Plan can be purchased for these products.
Supplies are limited, and these products are offered "While Supplies Last"."
Anyhow, most refurbished hardware are returns. Most of the time there isn't anything wrong with the kit being returned, but we still have to verify all the hardware components, and restore the hard drive. That process is, essentially, "refurbishing".
Sometimes machines get returned that had, say, a bad logic board. Customer gets a replacement immediately, we order the new logic board, install it, "refurbish" it, and put it out for sale again.
There generally isn't anything wrong with refurbs, and the bad experience people have with refurbished systems is just the "lemon factor" in action. Admittedly, it may be slightly higher for refurbished machines. Having actually done this for a while though, I have no qualms about buying refurbished.
We've also discussed this a couple of times before in the past. Don't forget AppleInsider's super-1337 search function
I think I'm going to go with new, because of the edu discount, and the fact that where I live there is no tax on hardware for educators. (A BIG plus!) The other side being that I haven't seen any 14" iBooks on the refurb sites.
I'm pretty much going between the 14" iBook (with added Ram and 60 gig HD), and the 15" PB. I want to see if the price drops any in the next few months, I hear there is an expo (Paris?) coming up soon.
Thanks again for the help.