MacBook Air :: Finding Alternative For MBA Applecare?
Oct 28, 2010
this will be my first mac - and i need some advice on applecare
my friend has kindly bought a MBA from hong kong on my behalf and i'll get it later this week (can't wait!). what i need to decide is if i should purchase some sort of 'insurance cover' for this MBA.
applecare is the obvious choice. however, �199 for the 2 additional years seem quite pricey. although i have links with my university, i believe i won't be able to get the educational price (�47) given the MBA was purchased from the HK online store.
do you think the �199 applecare will be important or are there 3rd party insurance covers out there i can consider?
I know the drill, I'm new here, but I have read that the majority of people here think apple care is a good investment, and I agree. But here is the spin.
I have about 2 weeks to decide whether I want apple care on my ibook G4 14" 1.42. It'll run me just under $300 (CDN). Thing is, with all the new improvements out there, is it even worth it for me to buy it? Like, if my laptop broke, I was thinking of just wanna splurging on a new macbook (not that it wouldn't hurt the wallat of course.
Another major point, the laptop from what I've noticed on ebay is only actually worth like $900. So I'm paying 1/3 of the value for apple care (since all the new upgrades have depreciated my laptop).
I might be purchasing a 30 inch cinema display and currently have a mid-2009 unibody MBP. I know I need the cable to power it, but do I need to drop the 100 dollars for the apple one or are their any alternatives?
Well I received my refurbished 27" i5 about two weeks ago. Since taking it out of the box it has consistently rebooted itself and sometimes even shuts down where I can't power it back up unless I remove the cord from the machine and reinsert it. I tried everything to troubleshoot, zapped PRAM, Reset SMC Controller, logged times after removing USB components, ran multiple quick and full hardware tests. Finally I gave one last attempt and wiped my drive clean and reinstalled snow leopard...Not a single one of these measures worked.
So today I finally called applecare for the first time ever. THey were extremely helpful, didn't try to walk me through troubleshooting steps since they understood that I already tried them all. They instead stated that since Im at around 28 days since ordering (may 14) that I can have it repaired or they can claim the one I got as DOA and ship me a brand new one. Once I receive the new one I ship the old one back. They also bumped up my delivery to overnight since I have been putting up with the reboots and trying to troubleshoot myself.
After discovering that the Tweetie app I use turns on the discrete GPU, I've been looking at alternatives to maximize battery life. A lot of twitter clients use Adobe Air, which also seems to get a bad rep, but is that because it drains battery life too, or because it's just buggy otherwise? So far I've been using twhirl without any obvious issues, and I'm testing out the battery usage with that running. I have to admit, I didn't notice any significant battery drain when Tweetie was running, so maybe I'm just overreacting here. If I remember right I got a little over 6 hours, and installed Tweetie about two hours after I turned my MacBook on then. I'd actually prefer twhirl since I use that on the desktop and I'm just used to it, but not if Adobe Air is going to cause problems on my shiny new MacBook.
I'm planning on purchasing a new hard drive soon to replace my current MacBook Pro 15" HD. For Mac, I'll be restoring my HD configuration through Time Machine.
I don't really want to reinstall Windows and reinstall all the apps and games on it and do not have a Windows-based imaging program that I could use.
I've heard of an app called WinClone that acts like CCC or SuperDuper and can image and restore the installation for you. However, the development of WinClone has apparently stopped and according to some posts in the MacUpdate link, it is incompatible with Snow Leopard/other users are experiencing problems while using WinClone.
I've got a DVD that I've been trying to rip to a movie file for the last three days, and have so far been unsuccessful. (and before anyone asks, it's a non-copyrighted DVD that our company has the rights to) What's happening is it gets 99.5% done ripping, then it just kind of sits there for a while, then the program closes. I end up with a movie on my desktop that isn't playable. I've tried on two different computers, ripping to two different formats (MP4 and H-264). I've tried ripping it directly from the DVD, and also ripping the DVD to the hard drive first and then creating the file from that. It does this every time, and I think it's just HandBrake being flaky. The DVD itself plays fine. Anyone suggest an alternative way for me to do this?
I heard a rumor that there would be an alternative to Parallels for running Windows OS on a Mac. I like how Parallels runs at the same time but it does run slow on my Mac and makes all other programs slow down, too.
Anyone know anything about new software that is comparable?
So I was running the OSX version of PeerGuardian and it was working just fine but on campus it was blocking my internet for some reason. Needless to say I had to take it off but I was wondering if there was any comparable software I could try to run.
I've done a few (well a lot) of DVDs now with iDVD using avi files on my hard disk with a view to either giving as presents or watching with the family on TV.
We do not want to hover around my laptop to watch a movie In about 90% of these iDVD created DVDs I get an error message from iDVD that there was a problem during encoding and if we try to watch them throgh the TV/DVD player then the film just stops about 75% of the way through.
I am looking for an alternative to iPhoto for viewing and organizing photos. I need something that allows for tags like iPhoto does and preferably something with a full-screen mode for editing.
My main problem with iPhoto is that it gets bogged down when you have imported thousands of photos. And I hate having to import photos on external drives before I can view them.
I've seen a lot of recommendations for Picasa, but I can't use that 'cause I'm on a PPC.
With a Mac Mini as a HTPC, I am going to add external storage that can be expanded to about 8TB. I don't see myself maxing out 4TB in the near future.
I have looked into Drobo, despite all of the mixed reviews. Some say they love it, some say it is slow and have had problems, and some have said their Drobo died no more than a year in. However, the ease of use and ease of expandability is very tempting. So, if I do not find an alternative I will purchase a Drobo soon.
I've used visual hub for quite a while now and I love it but it only runs in 32 bit. Is there a 64bit alternative? I did a bit of research and found the beta of Handbrake that runs in 64 bit but what I loved about visual hub is that you can queue up however many videos you want and click go. With Handbrake, you have to queue up each video manually.
This morning I found a file I was looking for then went back to find it again and spotlight will not locate it. I have re-started my computer and get the same results. I am hoping someone knows of some app that will so what spotlight is supposed to do. Another thing that bothers me is that I cannot tell where the file actualy is. If my recollection is correct, in the last OS X version, if you just held the cursor over the spotlight item for a few seconds, the location would be revealed. This no longer works?
I use stickies all the time, but there has to be something better out there! more features or better? Does anyone know a good alternative to the stock Stickies Mac app?
I'm looking for an all-in-one app (preferable) or suite of apps that can handle business contacts, general note-taking, to-do lists, tasks a calendar, basic project management etc.
Big plus if it can also do invoices, but that's not required.
So Omnifocus and Things wouldn't really apply here because those are specific for GTD type stuff.
I've looked at Contactizer Pro, SOHO Organizer, and Relationship so far. Not crazy about any of them.
I've been looking for an alternative to Microsoft Entourage. Something can do calendering/address book/email. Anyone have any suggestions? I saw Daylite, but I don't feel like spending $189 for it.
I'm looking for an alternative to OS X's DigitalColor Meter under Utilities. I'm looking for a Mac equivalent to ColorPic on Windows [URL]. The drawbacks of the DigitalColor Meter are that I can't copy the HTML color code in one click of a button, and that I can't capture more than one color at a time.
if there was another program available for mac that preformed a similar function to that of Adobe Indesign CS3? I have heard of a program called Swift Publisher, but that does not seem to suit my needs fully. Pages also seems to be a tad too simple for what I intend it to be. So, to restate, is there a program which performs a similar function to that of Adobe Indesign?
I have a Airport Extreme base station connected to a D-Link router. The router continually crashes and I have to re-enter the relevant info. Can anyone suggest a suitable replacement router which is a more robust alternative?
apple replaced my SR mbp with a new unibody model after a series of breaks (which was awesome). Anyway, they told us to buy applecare, and since we were getting a brand new laptop we kind of had to say yes, so we bought it. Then when I got home and actually tried to apply it, it said it already had applecare. So I looked up the serial and it's covered until sep 2012, 3 years. So did I just get free applecare or did it just automatically apply because they were on the same receipt?
