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Should I Buy AppleCare or Upgrade My Hard Drive For My MacBook Pro?

April 13th, 2008 by Mike

Here’s a Mac question I’ll throw out in to the internet ether: My MacBook Pro is coming up on its 1 year birthday, should I buy the AppleCare for it, or upgrade the hard drive to a speedier, bigger model (upon doing so will kill my warranty)?

Pros / Cons:

 

  • I would hate to have something bad happen to my brushed metal companion and have no warranty, but I’ve never purchased Apple Care with my iMac or iBook and everything seems fine there, but its still scary.
  • It would be awesome to get the speed and space increase that a new HD would get me.
  • A new hard drive is way cheaper than Apple Care.  Apple Care is $349 while a new 7200 RPM,  200 GB Seagate HD is only $149 @ NewEgg. 
  • Its not completely scary, but its also not trivial to replace the hard drive in a MacBook Pro according to the walk-through I’ve read.

 

Seriously I’m stumped on this one.  Anyone have some thoughts on this?

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 13th, 2008 at 9:51 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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  • jay
    I just bought a macbook pro at the Apple store and the applecare (Kind of a goofy name, isn't it?) was $230, after rebate.
  • Joe
    oh and applecare is only $300 on amazon.com right now... so you owe me $50 bucks
    http://www.amazon.com/AppleCare-Protection-MacB...
  • Joe
    MIke, I would think about getting applecare, and get the hd in a few weeks/months. Couldn't you just throw the old drive back in if there was a warranty problem?
  • upgrade and have a better machine
    apple care is a waste of money

    unless youre phil and you drink tons of coffee and smoke cigarettes around your machine all the time, then yeah, buy insurance. if you are a normal dude, its not needed. 'sides, dont you want blazin fast?!
  • @kim
    I'm usually on a schedule of every 2 years upgrade either the desktop or the laptop. So...every machine I have usually needs to stick around for roughly 4 years, and because of that, I never bother to resell any of my old machines.

    I know where Schuyler stands, but are you thinking that since I want to keep the thing for at least 3 more years do you think I should play it safe with the AppleCare or upgrade and have a better machine for 3 years?
  • BTW
    use twitter.c/answerme

    it rulez
  • Dude, I just upgraded memory and HD.
    RAM from crucial.com and HD from MacSales.com

    Pros
    -el cheap-o!
    -el fast-o!
    -el kick ass-o!

    Cons
    -none (-o)

    Pay 350 for apple care a year into the purchase, hell no.
    That's my $0.02


    Just do it, and like Arnold says: "Stop whining!"
  • kim
    I can tell you from experience, they can be a real pain to get back together. Taking apart is easy. :)

    I guess for me the question always is - how long do I intend to keep the machine, and what do I want to do with it later?

    If you want to re-sell it, selling it with AppleCare ups the value, in my experience, if you sell it within the warranty issue.

    If the logic board goes bad, it's about $900 to have Apple repair the machine, just to give you a frame of reference for something that happens and is pricey.

    It's always a tough call for me - we got it for my husband's 17" MBP but not my black MacBook, based on price of the machine vs. repair costs.

    So yeah, how long do you plan/need to keep the sucker up and running?
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