OT: MacBook randomly shuts down..

[Bill Vlahos]

I don't purchase AppleCare for my own Macs nor for the ones at the  
company I am IT Manager of. We use laptops almost exclusively from  
both Apple and Dell.

My experience is that Macs are extremely reliable and the cost isn't  
worth it. I do purchase it for Mac servers because of the urgency of  
any failure. I also purchase spare parts kits for the XServes and I'm  
about to finally replace a hard drive in a 4 year old XServe out of  
the spare parts kit. This will be the first time I've had to do it.

We use Dell computers at work and DO purchase extended warranties on  
them. They need it. Within 4 years almost all of them >90% of them  
end up using it. The only good thing is that Dell has figured out how  
to have this kind of crappy reliability and but good service (they  
almost never hassle any on-site repair) and still make money.

Personally I'd rather have stuff that doesn't fail than stuff that  
fails a lot but is easy to fix. We have had some Macs that have  
problems and need service but the percentage is very low. We simply  
spend the money to repair out of warranty items ourselves on the  
small number of ones that need it and still come out ahead. Usually  
fundamental problems like logic boards fail under warranty anyway and  
other items like hard drives are so inexpensive we just replace them.  
It is funny that some users act really surprised when their computer  
stops working after they drop it and break the screen or spill  
coffee, hot chocolate, or soda into the laptop which are not covered  
by AppleCare.

I might buy AppleCare if I was in situations that put the computer at  
risk and I depended on it or for the reasons you cite below.

Bill Vlahos


On Jan 5, 2008, at 11:36 AM, Chipp Walters wrote:

> I certainly do for all my cars. I used to do it for laptops, until  
> I was
> burned by CompUSA, and didn't purchase one for my most recent Sony. I
> recommend it for laptops for my wife and kid, as they are really  
> hard on
> 'stuff.' I don't for desktops. 3-year max seems to be the best deal  
> here.
>
> On Jan 5, 2008 1:16 PM, j downs <downs.david.j at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>> you ... didn't ... buy... applecare?
>>
>> Do people really purchase extended warranties in this day and age?
>>
>>
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