Mac laptops & their reliability

sebtomato

I had a MacBook Pro, 15". Battery lost half of its capacity after 6 months (and it's not user replaceable), fan was going full blast quite often (despite doing office work), was getting very warm. Aluminium case was not as robust as it looked (scratches despite storing computer in sleeve all the time).

Apple was also very keen to sell an extended warranty after the 1st year, while UK customers should get at least 2 years for free...

fwor

sebtomato wrote: »

Apple was also very keen to sell an extended warranty after the 1st year, while UK customers should get at least 2 years for free...

There's nothing special about warranty for UK customers, and nothing that mandates that we should get 2 year+ warranties.

If Apple wants to set their warranty at 1 year, that's their choice - it's purely a business decision for them.

duggan1

If you want an Apple go and buy an Apple. Bear in mind though that the hardware benefit is simply that the contents are uniform meaning little to no 3rd party driver issues.

The macbooks themselves are made in the same factory as hp pavilions and lenovo laptops, by the same people, and with stock parts out of the same bins. Sure Apple have engineered macbooks differently and you have to weigh up the cost verses utility.

FWIW my PC at home boots windows 8.1 in around 4 seconds from an SSD and a 4 year old HP Elitebook boots in 6 from an SSD.

SSDs are awesome.

InsideInsurance

fwor wrote: »

There's nothing special about warranty for UK customers, and nothing that mandates that we should get 2 year+ warranties.

This is just the normal miss understanding of the european law saying that consumer should have 2 years protection but wasnt implemented in the UK as the Sales of Goods Act was considered to be better than the EU requirement

RumRat

JustAnotherSaver wrote: »

Because laptops these days have that horrendous Windows 8

But then we say get start 8 & all the rest & we go around in circles not really helping what she's looking for.

I know this is a moneySAVING forum but some times people just want what they want & they're happy to pay the money for it.

I paid out about £1300-£1400 to build my PC. A £300 pre-built would've carried out the tasks i use the PC for. I built to the spec i did at the cost it was because that is what i wanted.

Nothing wrong with W8.1.1. It would be best to actually learn how to use it before she condemns it. She'll have to learn how to use the Apple machine anyway.
If you really wimp out and put something like Classic Shell on it, you won't even know you've got W8 on it....A bit pointless IMO.
However, as you say, if she really wants an Apple machine because she likes them and the OS then cost shouldn't come into it..
Theres an new iMac out....Yours for £6500 (give or take) for the top end machine.... I think that might be stretching it a bit far though...;)

securityguy

"I said "small SSD" because i just thought 256GB as your main drive is actually quite small in this day & age. With 1TB & 2TB drives available."

In other news, I find it hard to get the same amount of luggage into my Porsche as I can put in my Transit.

Liverfool

RobTang wrote: »

MacBook SSDs are soldered into the board so they are not replaceable (most ultrabook class laptops are the same.)

There's a bit of confusion that's crept in - SSDs (like hard drives) use industry standard connections - the drives are themselves made by drive manufacturers rather than Apple per se.

But Apple DO do differently is to solder RAM in place (on some if not all models) so you can't get a cheaper model & then upgrade the RAM yourself for example.

Knarf44

Having had some past experience of repairing out of warranty MacBooks, MacBook Airs and I-Macs that suffered everything from failed hardware including screens to having red wine or sugary drinks spilled all over them I urge anyone to ensure they have insurance cover for them. The price of replacement parts, if they are available, is horrendous and you will be paying premium prices for them. In many cases you do literally have to be prepared to write off the machine as uneconomical to repair by the time parts and labour are costed. Google replacement oem screens, hard drives, motherboards and aluminium cases for your specific model and you'll see what I mean.

I believe Apple stores are themselves reluctant to take on anything other than simple repairs on out of warranty machines and will try to sell you a refurbished one instead.

InsideInsurance

Knarf44 wrote: »

The price of replacement parts, if they are available, is horrendous and you will be paying premium prices for them. In many cases you do literally have to be prepared to write off the machine as uneconomical to repair by the time parts and labour are costed. Google replacement oem screens, hard drives, motherboards and aluminium cases for your specific model and you'll see what I mean.

I believe Apple stores are themselves reluctant to take on anything other than simple repairs on out of warranty machines and will try to sell you a refurbished one instead.

Sounds more like urban myth being repeated.

The issue with them is around the logic board, because CPU, GPU, RAM etc tends to be soldered to it and so if any of them fail you have to replace the whole board and that is expensive and makes most things beyond economical repair.

The rest of the replacement parts costs are higher than that those that would go into a truck sized case of most windows machines but you have to remember that they dont have truck sized cases and minimization always comes at a financial cost.

Looking online a replacement screen for my MBA is under £50, Apple wanted £150 including fitting and would replace the bezel etc at the same time for that. Not really much more than a windows laptop and certainly doesnt make a £850 computer uneconomical to repair, especially given how well, comparatively, they hold their value.

I think the optical drive for my iMac was around £30 (they're $40 online) but I didnt bother replacing it because I cant remember the last time I used a disc in it. Its a job I'd have done myself rather than paying anyone else to do.

securityguy

"I believe Apple stores are themselves reluctant to take on anything other than simple repairs on out of warranty machines and will try to sell you a refurbished one instead."

You'll struggle to get a main agent to rebuild the gearbox on your car, too.

In both cases, there's a thriving secondary market of people who will do that sort of work. There's a guy I use who will do complex repairs, and even has a surface-mount rework station to do component-level repairs where necessary. He holds a healthy stock of second-hand parts (as does your local BMW specialist), will do complex repairs and modifications (as does your local BMW specialist) and is willing to use third-party components (as does...).

The Apple Store business model, like the BMW dealer model, is to replace entire units so that they always get a "first fix". I had my Air repaired under AppleCare because the cable linking the screen to the main unit had got an intermittent fault that caused an intermittent display flicker. They replaced the whole cable/hinge/lid/screen/camera/etc as one unit, essentially the whole top half, which had I been paying would have been £400, but they did the job in 20 minutes and there was essentially zero chance of it not being a fix. A specialist would have repaired or replaced the cable, probably involving either soldering the cable or soldering it where it joins the display, which would be a fiver's worth of parts but several hours' work to get at it, and a significant risk of having to open it up and have another crack. It's a different model.

Similarly, the Saab legacy people want £350 for a rear lamp cluster complete, while you can buy the LEDs inside (which is what has failed on mine) for about £60 and pay someone to strip the whole thing down and rebuild it. Apple Store are the people with the big parts holding who want to replace whole units. Specialists will do specialist, one-off repairs. You pays your money.