AppleCare Protection Plan - Opinions?

[Craig Meadows]

Buying two new Mac Pro's for the edit suites. I usually add the AppleCare Protection Plan but have never really needed or used it. What are your experiences/opinions? Worth it for the peace of mind that a extended warranty provides? Thanks!

[Imran Farouk]

I've never used it but thats because I know the guys there and so they just fix it for me and from time to time when I feel like they did a good job I pay them, otherwise Its free...
Most people i know though have found it quite useful...

If anything...to get your moneys worth, buy from Silverado, they are doing 5 years for the price of the 3...(thats from what i heard last) not to mention their service is unbelievably efficient at getting the Mac Pro's to the exact specs etc. that you need...
They also have FCS3 on HDD so its like a 25min install instead of the normal hour/2/3 it may take...its crazy stuff they are doing...highly recommend them...

Just to be on the safe side though, because silverado wouldn't be doing the maintenance, just make sure your apple store near you is efficient enough, sometimes I've had friends whose handed in laptops and not got them back for a week, its really about relations in some apple stores,
Although overall, the warranty is worth it for the peace of mind...

[Noah Kadner]

A must for any Mac Pro IMHO.

Noah

[KETCH ROSSi]

Definitely something you must add in to your budget, if you don't have the money up front you can buy it after, but you have to do so before the original warranty expires.


Yes Silverado Rocks, I got my Unibody MBP 17" from them with their new SDD, and it flies!

ciao

[D Fuller]

Applecare is like any other extended warranty. It's an insurance policy. In the long run, it will almost surely be a money-losing proposition. I've bought about 20 macs over the past 10 years. I've sent only one of them back to apple, and that was under its original 1-year warranty. If I had bought Applecare for them all, I would have spent $6000 or so. (20*$300=$6,000) I would have had to have had quite a lot of failures for that to be worth the money, and Apple makes pretty reliable computers.

That said, I do buy applecare for Macbook Pros, because they take more of a beating by traveling. Still, I've never actually used it for a MacBook -- the one I sent back was a G4 tower.

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Buying two new Mac Pro's for the edit suites. I usually add the AppleCare Protection Plan but have never really needed or used it. What are your experiences/opinions? Worth it for the peace of mind that a extended warranty provides? Thanks!

WORTH EVERY PENNY!!!

I will say that I never, ever buy extended warranties on anything... With only two exceptions. That would be the Mac Pro and Macbook Pro. The reason why is that Apple support is phenomenal and unlike common PC systems, it's difficult or even impossible to get proper replacement components for these systems from Apple after 18 months or so and they have already moved on to new models.

That said, it depends on how long you intend to use the systems and how much you want to gamble, but I've found that resale value on Apple systems is considerably higher if they are still covered under AppleCare, even for a just a month or two when you go to sell them.

Since I started using Mac systems again (didn't touch them throughout most of the G3~G4 years)... I have had to make use of AppleCare support twice. Once on a G5-Quad system -- the Quadro card died. They replaced it, no big deal, but it saved me $3K to buy the same card on my own or more if I replaced the system.

The second time I made use of AppleCare was May of this year. My 8-core 3.2GHz Mac Pro died. It was a massive failure, logic board, video card, RAID card, all toast. Apple techs initially were just going to order all new parts and essentially build me a new system with the same specs, but the Nehalem pros had been out for nearly 6 months and they could no longer get the replacement logic board for my system, or at least it was on lengthy back-order. So they replaced it with a brand new Nehalem Mac Pro 8-core, 2.93GHz, 16GB RAM and ATI 4870 video. :coolgleamA:

Like David says above, it's an insurance policy. And is somewhat of a gamble. I have had such good luck with Apple systems over the nears -- close to 20 systems. I seriously almost didn't buy AppleCare for the '08 8-core Mac. Now I'm glad that I did. As configured from Apple at the time, it was nearly $6K and that's before I added in RAM, HDDs, etc.. on my own. Because it would have taken months to get all the parts to fix the thing if I AppleCare didn't step in with a replacement. That right there saved me from fighting with that and spending $6K+ on a new system... It easily saved me more money than I've spent in total on AppleCare policies over the past several years since I've been buying Macs again.

[Noah Kadner]

Yeah just want to second that Jeff- never buy an extended warranty for *anything* except every Mac I buy. Not to say that Macs are unreliable, just that for the costs of repairing one ever vs. the super low costs of the added Applecare and the excellent service it gets you, it seems like a no-brainer.

Noah

[Brook Willard]

It's a must. Back at Apple, we used to call it the "AppleCare Replacement Plan".

[jimhare]

My 3-year old original Mac Pro stopped working the other day. Fixed free of charge and had it back in two days.

[Curran Giddens]

I once bought a $600 nVidia gfx card from MacMall for my G5. When it crapped out on me 2 years later, AppleCare replaced it for free. Another time I fried the power supply....

Well worth the $$, IMHO.

[ogauchan]

Sliverado offering 5 years Apple care for all Mac systems.

[Torrey Loomis]

Folks,

I can concur with everything on here. AppleCare is worth every penny.

We figured if three was good, five would be better. That is why we extended it to five years.

Love to see all the other pro video VAR's that sell Apple follow suit...

:-)

Torrey Loomis
Silverado Systems, Inc.