Thread: computer warranty

Originally Posted by azjoe

But I think even MACs are repaired by non-Apple people too, aren't they? I'd guess parts and availability might be more expensive, though.

MacWorld and other such magazines/sites list various repair shops...many advertise that they are cheaper than Apple.

What happened with your Epsons? I just got their newest All-in-One and haven't had any issues (although I don't print all that much) and had to call their customer service with a question and they were very helpful. I dumped HP becasue they wouldn't support my older All-in-One with a scanner driver update for Mac - they updated the printer driver, but not the scanner...the logic escapes me.

Thanks for the responses guys, it looks like I'm not trying to be overly cheap, just Apple is too greedy, and I got unlucky.

The mac mini is really a laptop - all parts inside are laptop parts. I'm comfortable with replacing parts even in laptops, here there are 5 of them - board/disk/dvd/memory/cpu (the later 4 are really standard parts that PCs use as well. The sound/bluetooth/wifi are also modular, but probably not standard.

The broken part is the motherboard - it started all of a sudden by the USB ports and bluetooth disappearing, then the audio, all possible resets could bring back briefly the audio and bluetooth, but not the USB.
Now the computer can't see its hard drive, but it sees the DVD, although they are on the exact same slot and I can connect the harddrive to another computer via enclosure and verity it is fine.

This one lasted 1yr 4mo. I did not expect a hardware failure past the first year, esp. on a computer that sits still, but here it happened.

I mentioned that I decided to get another mac mini (I don't have to convert 1TB of data to some other filesystem) and it looks like I'll offer this one on ebay for parts to offset the cost a little bit. Perhaps some razors will be going on B/S/T as well.

WB, that's a good idea, I think I will actually do that and call Apple to bitch. I have to find some way to get up the ranks. Their last update to Tiger broke the usb webcam (and even apple doesn't make their firewire webcam anymore). After pestering them for 2 months they had the nerve to tell me that their engineers are too bussy with the new release of the operating system and don't have time to fix bugs they have introduced!!! So they broke my system and they are working on the fix that I have to buy not the one they are supposed to give me for free. I pointed this out and asked the comment to be send to corporate, which they said they will, but that's the last thing I hard from them.

sorry for ranting

Thats odd as I have an IMAC and a mac lap top and have had them both for 2 years and no extended warranty! Any problems I have had ( twice I think) I just called them and they went above and beyond what would be expected to help me!

It's too bad you're having problems with the Mac Mini ----- do you think this is a fluke or do you think Macintosh is starting or has been producing lower quality products -- I want to like them and hope this isn't the case.

Justin

Build yourself a PC. Parts are cheap enough. I always build my own computers. If you put the right parts together you can overclock. My E6600 at stock speed is 2.4Ghz, but overclocked it runs at 4.1Ghz with water cooling.

Have you called Applecare about it? I've sent through laptops before that were about a month out of warranty and gotten it taken care of. You might give it a try because Applecare is generally pretty cool about it

I've actually read a lot of stories online about getting great customer service from apple after emailing [email protected] it could be worth a try.

Originally Posted by jaegerhund

It's too bad you're having problems with the Mac Mini ----- do you think this is a fluke or do you think Macintosh is starting or has been producing lower quality products -- I want to like them and hope this isn't the case.

I am not sure, I hope it is a fluke, so I'm giving them another chance. They are alredy lower quality compared to before Steve Jobs days. Back then the hardware was high end. Now it's just the regular stuff.

As far as how far and beyond Apple goes - I have filed 6 bug reports with them and none was resolved satisfactory. Three are outstanding the other three I fixed on my own by reinstalling the operating system from scratch (and because of a bug in the installer DVD when you want to preserve the previous system it took me good 4 hours to do so).

5309093 ichat freezes, cannot quit iApps Crash/Hang/Data Loss 02-Jul-2007 09:59 PM Closed 5309078 ssh segfaults Other Crash/Hang/Data Loss 02-Jul-2007 09:50 PM Duplicate/4948045 5309075 Safari Crashes Safari Crash/Hang/Data Loss 02-Jul-2007 09:35 PM Duplicate/5264527 5297754 USB Webcam Audio device not recognized after upgrade to 10.4.10 Mac OS X UI/Usability 27-Jun-2007 03:26 AM Duplicate/5164681 5337638 os x crashed Mac OS X Crash/Hang/Data Loss 16-Jul-2007 09:48 AM Open 5297755 Bluetooth headset crashes the OS Mac OS X Crash/Hang/Data Loss 27-Jun-2007 03:36 AM Open
So, yeah, perhaps depends on what you compare to. I am used to my computers to have uptime of year and a half (that's how often we loose electric power or something else important happens). I call apple only when there's a serious software or hardware issue, for example the memory leaks in Safari aren't even worth bothering with - I just switched to a better browser.
The last thing I can call them is 'helpful' - the first level of support is completely clueless anyways and the second level wasn't much better either.

Notice the 2 open bugs - that's over 7 months with no resolution.

The one customer service that in my experience goes far and beyond everytime is the old IBM (haven't used them for 3 years). My calls are escalated to real engineer within few minutes and whenever hardware issue is suspected (always) a return padded box is waiting on my doorstep at 7:30am next day.

My wife and I use laptops exclusively these days. We use them in bed, lying down, and that puts a lot of stress on the power connection. In what I think is a really poor design absolutely common to all laptops, the power connector is soldered to the motherboard of the laptop. Over the course of 3-4 years, I guarantee that we will need to replace the motherboard because of power issues at least once.

I expect to replace my laptop every three years, figuring that the CPU advances will be worthwhile by then (I do some video processing, and that needs CPU). We have found that Dell's 3 year in-home service works very well for us. It will be cheaper to buy that than to buy the motherboards that we expect to need over the life of the system.

It's the only extended warranty we get. The others just aren't worth it.

Hey, if you have open bug reports that date to before the warranty went out, you have standing to get things done. Call applecare and try to get them to put through a work order for you and let them know about these open disputes.