Refurbished is the way to go. I would get the extended warranty for a student that will be lugging it around with heavy books all of the time. I managed to trash two of them that way. I don’t have that problem now, and I have two laptops, because my company is almost all Mac.
I understand there’s a school district in the upper-class suburban Philadelphia area that’s trying to unload a bunch of them… 
If you’re not interested in buying new, the best place to find occasional deals on refurbished/used Apple computers is Low End Mac. They also provide useful comparisons of the stats of older & newer products to see what the better value might be.
But unless you’re going for much older products, the educational discount is often the best deal you’ll get.
What is the math? How do you figure that replacement parts (and labor) are going to be relatively inexpensive?
Serious question, as I’m in the market for a MacBook, and one thing I’m wondering about is buying the extended warranty.
The math is the premium that Apple is able to levy for the gimped hardware that comes in their computers. You are paying for the brand name and the OS, which is built upon an open-source platform (FreeBSD).
Sadly, this is no longer true. When they dropped the annual fee to $99 they eliminated hardware discounts. Only Select and Premier members of the ADC (Apple Developer Connection) program were eligible, but the ADC program has been replaced by the $99 Mac Developer Program. IIRC, the ADC program was quite a bit more than $99.
Another thing to keep in mind, if you live near an Apple store - you get support for free by someone who has at least an above average knowledge of your system. For example, where I live, I have two Apple stores less than 15 minutes away from my house, and another two less than 20 minutes away from my work.
A few examples where it’s proven useful:
On my laptop, I removed a key from my keyboard because it was sticky, and the little metal prongs on the back of the key broke. I drove over to the Apple store, and they found in a drawer (and gave me for free) a new M key for the keyboard of my 7-year-old laptop.
I bought a new router for my home network setup and couldn’t get it to work with my iMac. I knew calling my ISP would be a huge exercise in frustration. I printed out the setup screens for my router and the network setup screens for Mac OS X, went to the Apple store, and the employee in 10 minutes told me where I was going wrong.
A friend of mine was upgrading her old Mac Mini to 10.6. After the upgrade the screen went blank and she had problems rebooting. She drove over to the Apple store and they told her what was wrong, she had it back the same day.
Hmmm. I’m still not getting it. Something goes wrong 2 years in. I’ve got the expertise to know what part to buy and then to fix it? Or, there are other places that will service your Mac on the cheap? Or…?
Not exactly true. Certain times of the year Apple offers 10-20% off of many products, sometimes including a student discount. Often times these sales are unannounced (or only announced on their website or through their store’s newsletter).
I know for sure that they have a Black Friday sale. I think that they also have one over the summer. You can try going to your nearest Apple store and talking to the employees there. Usually they don’t have a problem disclosing information about upcoming sales.
Note: Even with the sale, you might not be able to get the best price (thanks to eBay, etc.)
Also, they sometimes offer corporate discounts as big as 10-15% off. I have family that works for Google and she has access to these offers. Try asking any friends you know that work in the technology fields they might (unlikely as it is) have similar discounts.
And always check www.dealmac.com – they keep up on online deals like macmall or expercom.com … or amazon! And list lots of deals on accessories.
And they’ll alert you when new refurbs show up on Apple’s site. Which have a great reputation.
They have a great tagline: How to go broke saving money.
If you are looking for an extended warranty, I would look to a company besides Apple. Squaretrade will sell you a 3-year warranty on a $1500 laptop for $200, as opposed to the $250 Apple wants. Additionally, Squaretrade frequently has sales for 30% of more off their warranties. Also, you can check with your credit card company, because they will often insure your items at a lower cost as well. I know Amex does it, and I’m sure some of the other companies do it as well.
As an aside, I hate to turn this into a Mac/PC war, but I think you would be far, far better off from an economic perspective if you didn’t buy a Mac. But, if you are sold on them, I would still look around for a warranty.
I’ve had AppleCare on virtually every Mac I’ve owned since my first Centris 610 in 1993, and typically have gotten some use of it. The Macs I have not had AppleCare on… I usually regret it at some point.
This is especially true of Mac laptops. Most people with a little know-how can crack open a desktop and switch out a faulty PCI card or whatever, but it is never easy on a laptop. My most recent Mac, a first-gen MacBook Pro, had a HD failure about two years into its life, and it was a matter of taking it to an Apple authorized repair shop and they fixed it, no questions asked.
I bought a refurbished 1st generation iBook and it was the second worst Mac I’ve owned, after the Performa 5200. Not sure if that is a reflection of that particular model, but I personally would spring for the new model if you can afford it.
Compatibility issues shouldn’t be a concern. Microsoft Office has a Mac version, and if there’s a need to use Windows-only apps, you can partition the disk to run as a PC, or emulate Windows using Parallels.
Do you have a MicroCenter near by? I picked up a brand new unibody (the latest design) white MacBook for $799 a few months ago from them.
I swear MicroCenter sucks at advertising because it seems like nobody knows about this.
I had a MacBook that I abused the hell out of for a few years. After a while, I started having screen issues. I researched it, then purchased the parts needed from powerbookmedic.com. I was able to fix the Mac myself with help from their repair guide. I was impressed with how easy it was (I had to open the case and the screen to access the parts).
As to Apple Care, I recommend not purchasing it at first. If you are one of the few that gets a problem machine, you still have a year to chose whether or not to purchase the extended care. I figure if you have no issues within a year of ownership then you should be good to go.
I purchased my recent MacBook at an Apple store. I had no idea of the student discount until the clerk asked if I attended school. I showed him my online class login screen and he knocked $100 off the price.
Lastly, and this is why I don’t mind paying the premium for Apple: I had a MacBook Pro for work that one day stopped working (would not turn on). I took it to the Apple store and they were able to boot within 10 minutes, fixed the issue and sent me on my way without spending a penny (the machine was within it’s 1 year factory warranty). I will take that any day over trying to deal with an overseas call center.
I’ve had very similar experiences, as have many of my friends. It’s not in writing, so they might change the policy any day, but for years Apple has
provided limited free servicing for their products even beyond their warranties. Obviously this doesn’t apply to big issues, but if your computer is just acting funny (won’t reboot, won’t eject a disc, etc.) you can usually just bring in to one of the Geniuses and have them fix it right in front of you -often with tips on how to get better performance out of your machine.
I once had a friend spill beer on my external keyboard. It shorted the keys. I didn’t disclose how it happened, but the keyboard was past its warranty by just a few weeks. Apple shipped me out an identical keyboard and it didn’t cost me anything.
Of course, this was 6 years ago and as Apple’s stock price grows their amount of free stuff seems to diminish.
Somewhere in that statement there is a nugget of fact, but it is buried under layers of invective. What do you mean by “gimped” hardware?
Stranger
I used to do contract work repairing laptops (Mostly IBM/Lenovo ThinkPads). MacBooks are trivially easy to crack open and fix compared to anything else.
Just because the hardware isn’t on the bleeding edge of technology doesn’t mean it’s “gimped.” I also don’t see what point you think you’re making about OS X being built upon FreeBSD. It’s kind of like telling people that it doesn’t make sense to buy a BMW since you could build your own kit car - for a few people, that’s a viable option but for the majority of consumers, it’s stupid to try.
Yes, you’re paying for OS X, but in my opinion (See what I did there? Take notes.), it’s worth the price, at least on a laptop. It boots in seconds, I don’t have to fuck with driver updates (or rolling them back when they’re buggy), and I don’t have to worry about viruses or malware. Furthermore, my “gimped” laptop runs the applications I need faster than anything running Windows 7. Last but not least, I can run Windows on it via Boot Camp if I really need to.
Windows machines have plenty of pros too and I can’t imagine ever having a Mac replace my gaming machine.
I mean Apple charges too much for the hardware you are getting, which we already knew.
Let’s look at the $1200 Macbook Pro. 250GB HDD? $1500 Macbook has a 340GB HDD? It’s not until you’re at the $2000 level that a 500GB HDD becomes a “standard” feature.
And to upgrade from 250GB to 500GB costs $150… which, incidentally, is about $50 more than the actual cost of a 500GB HDD, without consideration that the 250GB HDD is going back on Apple’s shelf.
Want a BluRay drive on that same laptop? Oh, sorry…
Sorry, but that’s just not the case. I’ve spec’d out a comparable Dell and HP machine to match a MacBook Pro, and the Mac was actually bracketed by the two. It is true that Apple uses premium hardware which makes the prices look more expensive across the line that comparable PC machines, but that is because they don’t offer a truly low-end offerings, especially in the MacBooks. You can go cheaper, but your trading off performance and reliability, which is something that Apple considers to be a primary quality of their machines. (Although the are admittedly slow about upgrading their lines, so near the end of production for a particular machine they do lag other offerings.) You can’t just compared hard drive size; you have to look at the actual specs, including drive speed and throughput.
Now what is true is that memory and peripherals that are branded as Apple OEM are outrageously expensive compared to even the exact same offerings by the same manufacturer that don’t have an Apple label on them. Their monitors are especially outrageous in price; I’d never buy one. But the cost of their computer offerings are comparable to the same quality components from other computer providers, and the packaging and ergonomics is (IMHO) vastly superior.
As for the operating system, while DarwinOS does have a higher level basis in FreeBSD (and regularly pulls updates from the FreeBSD forks) it has a the NextSTEP developed XNU kernel which has the Mach microkernel. None of this is derived from FreeBSD, which has a monolithic kernel (although it is migrating toward a configuration with a dynamical module loading microkenrel). The Quartz rendering engine, using a derivative of Display PostScript, is entirely of Apple provenance and is not shared in either direction with the FreeBSD project. So it is unfair to say that Apple simply took FreeBSD and slapped on some proprietary themes onto X11; there is a huge amount of development to make OS X what it is.
Stranger
Going to have to ask for a cite on your comparison of “comparable” machines putting Apple in the middle of the pack.
I am on newegg, looking at a Sony Vaio VPCF112FX. For $1200 you get:
Core i7 processor
4 GB RAM
512MB dedicated video memory on a dedicated video card
500GB HDD (7200rpm vs 5400 on the Apple – You were saying something about HDD specs? All the Apple drives are 5400rpm, no doubt to save power, sacrificing throughput . . .
16.4" screen
BD combo drive
Basically the Sony outclasses the Macbook in every possible regard except RAM.
Apple uses premium hardware? Such as?
Anything with an Apple label on it costs more than it should. That is the point I’ve been attempting to make all along.
None of this changes the fact that MacOS is built on FreeBSD. FreeBSD is an open source platform. Nothing you’ve said contradicts either of these points.