Refurbished Apple Products?

[schow]

Hey Folks,
I know a lot of you work with Apple computers, and I'm pretty sure I'd like to make the move to Apple from PC. I was just wondering, as a student, I'm tempted to buy an apple refurbished computer. I was wondering if any of you have experience with Apple refurbished products. Should I stay away, or is it a good deal?



Sherm

 

[sevres_babylone]

I haven't bought a refurbished one, but it's hard to know if it's a good deal without knowing model and price.

 

[schow]

well, it's just a hypothetical question. But here is the refurbished page for your pleasure.
http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APP...woa/wo/0.RSLID?mco=D8593B5A&nclm=CertifiedMac

 

[tom_f77]

I'm using a refurb 20" intel imac to write this reply. Saved about 30%, and it looks and works like a new one. The warranty etc is all as with a new one too; where's the catch? I wonder whether it might even be less risky than a new one; at least you know someone's tested it before they send it out!

My limited experience says "go for it"!

Tom

 

[thelovecollect]

yeah they should be fine..they all have 1-year warranties..
think about it this way, it's cheaper, and it's been looked at twice..

although you can get a discount as a student and if you are buying a computer, there is an offer for a free ipod–sell the ipod when you get the rebate and pocket the money..

 

[Nick R.]

Make sure you compare these prices against the educational discount you get as a student.

 

[Socke]

A friend of mine had an ibook, it was fully equiped with everything Apple had at the time and cost as much as the basic version.
Only problem was a faulty fan when some cuban ants tried to establish a settlement inside the notebook and Apple was unable to fullfill the waranty in Cuba. This was easyly solved with the help of other exchange students in Mexico, one taking it on his way back to Guadalajara and another bringing it back to Matanzas 🙂

Apple cleaned out the dead ants and apologized for the inconvenience.

 

[eli griggs]

I bought an Apple Macbook with the educational discounts this summer, with upgrades, a printer and an 30 gig iPod for about what you might pay at a retail store for the computer alone.

I know this is not quite what you were asking for but before you buy you should check out the cost of a new unit with student discounts and see if there are good rebates on additional items you would want or need. I was to increase the value of my already discounted purchase by buying a Canon pixima ip 4200 and iPod at the same time and qualifying for $279 in rebates (free printer, $90 iPod).

As far as making a choice of mac or pc, you can have both with the intel macs. I am using the free beta of 'Bootcamp' to run Windows xp professional on this machine as well as the mac os, with nary a hick-up.

By the way, if you need software, regardless of platform, try OpenOffice.org suite, www.openoffice.org/, for word processing, database, powerpoint, export to pdf, and a number of other features. It's free and very capable. The fact of the matter is, there is so much good, free Open Source software out there, you probably won't have to buy much software at all.

Software for Starving Students at softwarefor.org/ is a good place to start.

I also recommend you check with your schools IT lab and see if you can qualify for free or almost free Windows software. I am taking a intro to computers course this semester and was able to buy the XP pro disk(s), both regular and 64 bit for $14 plus shipping. I could have downloaded it for free as an iso file but I wanted the disk on hand. There are a number of software packages available and if you haven't taken a computer class yet, it may be worth it to do so.

Cheers

 

[sevres_babylone]

I'm still a generation behind, with but a powerbook G4, but I think the other responses give you some good advice. The Macbook Pro does offer advantages over the Macbook in terms of photography. For instance, I believe Aperture will only run on the Pro.

If you do go the mac route, I highly recommend a site called Macintouch, which is updated daily, for news, reviews and reports:

http://www.macintouch.com/index.shtml

I did a search there on "refurbished", and found an old reliability report on the old ibook G3:

"Others suggested that we compare new vs refurbished repair rates. In our previous Apple desktop Mac reliability surveys, we found no statistically significant difference in the reliability of new vs refurbished units. In this survey, a few readers commented they had problems with refurbished laptops, while others reported flawless operation."

Based on that, I think my only consideration would be price. (Otherwise the only reservations about refurbished Apple products that I came across had to do with iPods.)

 

[schow]

Yeah, I do need to check on those student discounts. Thanks for reminding me.

eli griggs, thanks for the link.