Buying an Apple Mac

Chili

So the question is... do I buy a refurb now for £1099 or do I wait until the alleged student offers come out in Oct which seems a long way off! Would the student offers be anything like as good as £1099?

I rung apple for advice also but he wanted to sell me it at current price so obviously he wouldnt commit to student deals even coming out at all.

He did say if I went through him he would possibly be able to throw in an operating system that he says we will need for free. ??

I'm getting confused now!

BigBouncyBall

"the student offer" is usually a free ipod with any mac. It's not money off the actual computer. It's true though that apple do traditionally refresh their lineup in late october/early november to catch the xmas market. But you can always wait forever. The main question is "do you need it now?" - if the answer is yes then get it, what is a great spec now will still be a v.good spec in 6/8 months time

oneandonlyboy

Every Mac comes with an operating system installed and restore disc's for free anyway. If you dont need it until the start of uni i would wait until October most macs take about 5-7 days from order till it turns up on your doorstep.

Leopard

Chili wrote: »

Thanks for the info.

He is doing computer graphics and animation come september but the uni have recommended a Macbook pro. When I asked her if she had any recommendations for buying one, she said "Google it" !! That was helpful!

We have looked at the refurbished on Apple Store and it looks like that will be the best bet really. They have a helpline so might give them a call and see what they say.

If they have any sense they will give students a good discount as I've heard said many times once you use a mac you never look back!!

Thanks again.

Once you use a Mac you do indeed never look back!

(You'll probably end up buying one for yourself, too, after you've played with his. )

If your son is going to be doing animation, he'd be well advised to get a MacBook Pro with a graphics card of 256 MB or more.

The Refurb section of the Apple Online Store is great. My companion bought a 2.2GHz MacBook Pro from there last April. The discount was 31%, it arrived by courier the following morning and it looked like new (perhaps it was: Apple had upgraded its range the week before!).

Its graphics card was 128GB, which was great for her but might struggle a little with complex and demanding animation work.

(Point I'm making is that although all the current range of MacBook Pro models come with at least 256MB of graphics card, if you're buying one from the Apple Refurb division which is of a previous generation be sure to check its graphics card will be sufficiently powerful for your son's needs.)

Remember that you can upgrade a laptop's components at a later stage but not its processor, its graphics card nor its maximum RAM capacity: so underbuying on those is an expensively false economy.

A MacBook Pro can run, in addition to its own screen, an external monitor up to 30" in size - and as an extended display, too, so you get a lot of working space that way. It's a much more versatile, portable and appealing option than a desktop unless you need serious computing grunt. He'll love it!

Max out its RAM to 4GB (which makes a tremendous difference) but don't buy the additional RAM from Apple: Apple charges a ridiculously extortionate price for it. The current price for the necessary 4GB of RAM is about £65 from Kingston (see * HERE * ) including shipping. Buying RAM on eBay, instead, is hazardous: eBay is where substandard and counterfeit RAM ends up. Poor quality RAM can be disastrous; don't go there.

Fitting the RAM yourself is simple and takes about five minutes.

Upgrading the hard drive to a 7,200 rpm model also makes a worthwhile difference. It's a bit more complicated but can still be done yourself; takes about an hour if you do it carefully. It's a good idea to buy a an upgrade kit for this: the new drive comes inside a portable enclosure - you put the new drive into the Mac and the "old" one into the enclosure, which gives you a nice external backup drive.

Neither of these upgrades infringes the Apple warranty, unless you carelessly damage the Mac yourself while installing them (which seems fair enough).

A new range of Mac laptops is due out in a month or two, once Intel has sorted out some delays with its latest chip. I prefer to remain a step or two behind the cutting edge, though, and let the early adopters find the problems in new models. That way, you know what you're buying, it's sorted, reliable and you get it cheaper!

One additional point: the MacBook Pro comes in two versions of screen - matte and glossy. Before buying, examine both types and see which one your son prefers (because he is going to be spending a lot of time looking at it and he doesn't want the wrong one for him). Matte is (currently) the default option. Some prefer the glossy screen but I hate it; I find it far too reflective.

I wish your son much pleasure with his Mac and with his course. He certainly has a very kind parent. :A

Millionaire

BigBouncyBall wrote: »

"the student offer" is usually a free ipod with any mac. It's not money off the actual computer. It's true though that apple do traditionally refresh their lineup in late october/early november to catch the xmas market. But you can always wait forever. The main question is "do you need it now?" - if the answer is yes then get it, what is a great spec now will still be a v.good spec in 6/8 months time

No you get a % discount depending on the uni/college that you are at.

My younger brother who is at uni got 13% off the price in store plus a free ipod worth just under £100 on rebate.

isofa

If the college has a proper deal with Apple, you'll get a much better discount.

PS I'd suggest upgrading the RAM direct from Crucial - top quality and low price.

http://www.crucial.com/uk/

For 15.4" MBP:

1Gb - £12.91
2Gb - £25.84
4Gb - £55.82

all inc VAT.

kr15snw

Our college reccomended the Macbook for print students and the Macbook pro for media students. The reason they reccomended a laptop was so we could bring it into uni and work straight off it. No 'oh but mr lecturer my software is a different version to yours' kind of thing.

Get the best you can afford as it will definately come in handy! Ive recently updated my macbook to 2gb and I love it even more now!

And I would worry about software yet, let them start the course first. I have never *cough cough* paid for software.... The joys of being an art college is there are hundereds of dodgy copies of pretty much all the software floating around

BigBouncyBall

Millionaire wrote: »

No you get a % discount depending on the uni/college that you are at.

My younger brother who is at uni got 13% off the price in store plus a free ipod worth just under £100 on rebate.

You've miss understood me. "The Student Deal" is the promotion apple run every year throughout the summer that usually offers a free ipod with any mac computer purchase. The Student discount (~13%) runs all the time.