Advice for 1st time iMac owner please !

bloodnok

As our 10 year old pc decided die and become a large doorstop, we decided to get the iMac on offer from Staples which was on the Hot uk deals site.....It's this one (Apple iMac - 21.5" - 8 GB RAM - 1 TB HDD - 2.7 GHz Core i5).
Staples did their utmost to sell me a care plan but to their dismay I resisted...........I assume that it has at least a 12 month guarantee, so my question is, should I have bought their care plan or can you tell me what would be my best option to cover any problems for the next 4 - 5 years to give me peace of mind.
I know I should have asked more at the store, but felt that they were being too pushy and I just wanted to get out as fast as possible.
Thanks for your patience !

Roland_Sausage

You can get Applecare which will cover you for a further 2 years. Not sure on the price as I have never bothered, but you can apparently get it cheaper on Amazon. If you opt for this, you need to buy it before the end of the first year.

If you have a Nationwide FlexPlus account, it comes with an extra year's warranty for electrical goods.

securityguy

If you want an extended warranty on Apple products (and a lot of them now are, and let's not start the usual haters/fanboi nonsense, quite difficult to repair) then Applecare is the best, and shop own-brand stuff much less attractive unless very cheap. You can buy Applecare from Apple at any point in the first twelve months.

Applecare is dirt cheap (about forty quid for three years) if you have access to higher education discounts. I've claimed on it a couple of times on some of my Macs, and more than made my money back. At the over the counter price it's more of a nuanced discussion, and the usual caveats about it being cheaper in the long run to self-insure probably apply.

InsideInsurance

securityguy wrote: »

If you want an extended warranty on Apple products (and a lot of them now are, and let's not start the usual haters/fanboi nonsense, quite difficult to repair) then Applecare is the best, and shop own-brand stuff much less attractive unless very cheap. You can buy Applecare from Apple at any point in the first twelve months.

Applecare is dirt cheap (about forty quid for three years) if you have access to higher education discounts. I've claimed on it a couple of times on some of my Macs, and more than made my money back. At the over the counter price it's more of a nuanced discussion, and the usual caveats about it being cheaper in the long run to self-insure probably apply.

If you buy it via Higher Education online then you actually get a 3 month warranty for free, the £40 AppleCare just adds telephone/ in store support ontop of the standard return to base warranty

securityguy

InsideInsurance wrote: »

If you buy it via Higher Education online then you actually get a 3 month warranty for free, the £40 AppleCare just adds telephone/ in store support ontop of the standard return to base warranty

I presume you mean year, not month.

I didn't know that. Thanks very much for pointing it out.

InsideInsurance

securityguy wrote: »

I presume you mean year, not month.

I didn't know that. Thanks very much for pointing it out.

Yes, year, my bad.

And it is explicitly online (and maybe phone). You can get the same discount on kit in store but you dont get the free extended warrant in store.

I only found out when buying the Mrs a new MBP using her uni discount.

Mr_Toad

bloodnok wrote: »

As our 10 year old pc decided die and become a large doorstop, we decided to get the iMac on offer from Staples which was on the Hot uk deals site.....It's this one (Apple iMac - 21.5" - 8 GB RAM - 1 TB HDD - 2.7 GHz Core i5).
Staples did their utmost to sell me a care plan but to their dismay I resisted...........I assume that it has at least a 12 month guarantee, so my question is, should I have bought their care plan or can you tell me what would be my best option to cover any problems for the next 4 - 5 years to give me peace of mind.
I know I should have asked more at the store, but felt that they were being too pushy and I just wanted to get out as fast as possible.
Thanks for your patience !

As the others have said go for Apple Care.

I never bothered for my 2009 MacBook Pro or the 2010 iMac and I've had no problems with either.

Apple did a recall on the HDD in my iMac which was replaced free of charge despite the fact that the iMac was well out of warranty.

Enjoy your new computer, you won't regret buying it.

buglawton

Just updated my iMac to Yosomite last weekend, went smoothly enough after one 'stuck on white screen' event.
This weekend I'm going to try to run 1 old Windows program on it, Paint Shop Pro, via Wineskin.

Mr_Toad

buglawton wrote: »

Just updated my iMac to Yosomite last weekend, went smoothly enough after one 'stuck on white screen' event.
This weekend I'm going to try to run 1 old Windows program on it, Paint Shop Pro, via Wineskin.

Was that the latest update that includes the iPhoto replacement now just called Photos?

I applied the latest update yesterday to both the iMac and MacBook and I'm just having a play with Photos.

As a replacement for iPhoto I rather like it so far. Nothing groundbreaking but just that bit better.

Photoshop Elements will still be my organiser and editor of choice but for quick and simple stuff Photos looks fine.

viv0147

PC Classes on line everything apple iMac video tutorials which are completely free and so informative and easy to understand you can also find him on YouTube David A Cox Enjoy your iMac

buglawton

Mr_Toad wrote: »

Was that the latest update that includes the iPhoto replacement now just called Photos?

I applied the latest update yesterday to both the iMac and MacBook and I'm just having a play with Photos.

As a replacement for iPhoto I rather like it so far. Nothing groundbreaking but just that bit better.

Photoshop Elements will still be my organiser and editor of choice but for quick and simple stuff Photos looks fine.

When I updated to Yosemite iPhotos stayed in place. Just had a read about the Mac Photos app. To get the best from it you should sync with iCloud. There are some complicated and maybe risky compression options that I'm not sure about yet and need studying.
But it's obvious to me that if I used Photo with iCloud we'd instantly exceed the free 5GB storage and have buy more at an expensive Apple rate. I am not sure if we lose the simple right click and edit in iPhoto feature that's so handy for a quick crop or straighten.
You lose Aperture or at least development is stopped. Forums are saying it's not Yosimite compatible.

iPhoto has a slightly buggy integration with Elements Editor, but at least I'd got used to it. I am not sure how well Photo integrates, it's essential for OH and I for serious editing, to be able to right click in iPhoto, edit in Elements, save and the saved item stays in the same event. Knowing Apple they probably broke a few things along the way.

Think I'll hold off switching to Photo for now, the redesign seems to mostly for Apples benefit not the user's.