shopping a laptop

The next MacWorld is in January in Paris. And no, I don't know anything. Just realize anything you hear before it comes out of Steve's mouth is a rumor. The refurb store is here

Wow :O
I gotta say I've been through alot of emotions with Deker these past few days, from excited, to deceptive and now relieved!

This one is just simply amazing for the price Macbook pro (Canadian $)

Well, well, well... very interesting and I didn't even know about this before (but since I never owned a mac, I wasn't paying attention to those things).

I've looked at the education page for refurbished products, but they don't seem to give additionnal rebates on them... Maybe I've just looked at the wrong place?

Also, why aren't there any refurbished Macbook? They ain't worth it?

Oh and one more question, is it worth buying the AppleCare Protection Plan? Because it is so damn expensive.

HEH,

I just noticed that if you go see the link I just put in my previous post, the macbook pro featured has a 256mb vid card while it has a 2.0GHz processor, but if you go see here you'll read that the macbook pro with 2.0GHz recieve the 128mb card while the 2.16GHz ones recieve the 256mb. So is there a mistake somewhere?


On the same topic, is the ATI Mobility Radeon X1600 with 128MB enough for playing games or do 3d stuff?

Educational discounts do not apply to the refurb store. Refurbs are not eligible for any further discounts. But, they do come with the same warranty and are eligible for AppleCare.

The MacBooks are newer so they may have not refurbished any yet, or they could have just sold them all. The "stock" on that page changes very often. Sometimes you'll see a computer there one day and the next it's gone because they sold them all.

Yes it is definitely worth buying the Applecare. It gives you 3 years of unlimited phone support, and the price is significantly less than just one out of warranty repair. The flat-rate repair fee for a MacBook Pro is $330 or so, so if you had even one repair out of warranty, it's cheaper to get the Applecare. Plus you get the phone support. If you don't have the Applecare, calling Apple for support after the 90 days of free support is $49 per call. Going to the Genius Bar is always free though. You can buy the Applecare during the first year while your computer is still under warranty, you don't have to buy it right away if you don't want to. It also receives a significant educational discount, so you can save almost $110 USD if you buy it from the educational store.

The 256mb card is an upgrade option, and also comes standard in the "higher config" MacBook Pro with 1gb of RAM, faster processor, etc.

The 128mb card would be good for most games. You may not be able to run Quake 4 with all the settings maxed, but it will be good for a laptop. Definitely better than the Macbook, which has an integrated card and no dedicated video memory, stealing memory from the system RAM. The 256 would obviously be better, but I'm not sure how much of a difference it would make. You may search around places like www.barefeats.com and see if they have any benchmarks comparing the two. Here is a page comparing Quake 4 on all of the systems, not including the Mac Pro. As you can see the MacBook Pro 15" is playable at 32fps, but the MacBook is only at 9fps, which is unplayable. I didn't notice which video card was in the 15", but I was just skimming the article.

Today I visited an apple store here in Amsterdam and played with the MacPro.

I'm really thinking about buying it...
Derek, would you upgrade the memory straight from apple? Or would you buy the memory somewhere else? And same goes for the harddisk?

Thanks for the info on the warranty and the links, but I'd probably go with the 128mb anyway, cause I can't afford a notebook above $2,000.

This one looks great, except for the memory... do you know if it's possible to upgrade that Macbook Pro and ask them to put a 1gb of ram? Or it's impossible to change it cause it's a refurbed?

I could possibly do it myself like NL said, but wouldn't that take away the warranty?

You can't have Apple upgrade the refurbs before they send them. They ship as-is.

I would not buy Apple RAM or Hard drives. Apple's upgrades like that are always very pricey compared to everyone else. However, we do have excellent quality RAM that has an extremely low failure rate. Do NOT buy the cheapest RAM you can find. Cheap RAM can cause all kinds of problems like kernel panics, application crashes, and even damage to the hard drive. I've experienced all of those on a 12" PowerBook I had that I tried to buy cheap RAM for. I only buy RAM from Crucial.com. It's still significantly cheaper than Apple's, but it's also still really good RAM. I have never had trouble with RAM from them.

As for the hard drive any SATA hard drive will work in a Mac Pro. You just need to format it to HFS+ instead of NTFS or FAT32.

Upgrading RAM in a MacBook Pro does not void your warranty, unless you break something while you're doing it, which would fall under accidental damage. It's very easy to install though. Just take out the battery, take out 3 screws, take off a plate, put in the RAM, and put it back together.

Alright, so I can buy more RAMs in the near future from somewhere else, but if I buy for example, 1gb of ram for the macbook pro series, will I be able to keep that 512mb I already have? (I'm guessing so, but just to be sure)

And... would you recommend a glossy widescreen display or not? I guess it depends if I want a minimum of light reflexion... but these richer colours look attractive.

Oh and last thing, do you consider this deal (link in my previous post) to be fairly good or should I wait to see what will be available shortly?

Dang, and thank you so much to answer all these questions.

There are two slots on the MBP, and only 1 is filled, so yes, you could put in a gig and have 1.5gb total.

The glossy/non-glossy is really a personal preference. The glossy is definitely brighter with richer colors, but you do have the glare.

I don't know the conversion to canadian dollars, but anything on the refurb store is usually a good deal. The prices will likely go down some if a new model comes out, but who knows when that will be, and there will always be new models coming out, so you really can't wait forever.

Hello!

This is with refernce to your message quoted below.
I've bought Sony Vaio FS285b almost 1 year back (sept'23 2005). I am facing the same problem as you had : Overheating issue.

Could you please advise me, what you did for that & what kind of support have you got for it?
Also, could you advise me regarding the updation of memory (to 1Gb)?

Thanks in advance,

Best Regards,

Shiva Krishna Kokkula
The Netherlands



[QUOTE=Rich]Here is a tip from me... Try to make sure you get a mobile specific chipset... When some manufacturers try to put in standard pc chips things just don't work as well (slower... user more power etc...).

The laptop I use currently is a Sony Vaio VGN-FS285B which was about €1250 a year or so ago.... Great screen, but really slow to boot up, good with applications, but takes some time load them up initially. Have had to send it back once due to an overheating issue and support to do this all as part of the warranty was great.[/QUOTE]