RE: [Fed-Talk] AppleCare on federal computers
RE: [Fed-Talk] AppleCare on federal computers
- Subject: RE: [Fed-Talk] AppleCare on federal computers
- From: "Mensch, Henry" <email@hidden>
- Date: Thu, 17 Jan 2008 15:52:32 -0800
- Thread-topic: [Fed-Talk] AppleCare on federal computers
Right--when you purchase Dell equipment with an extended service deal
Federal customers can choose "Keep your hard drive" as an option, usually
for a fee (up front when you purchase the system).
Details on what Applecare covers for desktop Macintosh systems can be found
here: http://www.apple.com/support/products/proplan.html ... the complete
T&Cs for Applecare can be found here:
http://www.apple.com/legal/applecare/appgeos.html
Like so many others, Apple is a business first and if they can save
money/resources/... by sending you to an Apple store you can be sure they
will try and that this will be their first approach. That's why you read
the T&Cs on these things--know what you've bought and what you're entitled
to.
--
Henry Mensch / Storage Manager
Center for Imaging of Neurodegenerative Diseases
VA Medical Center, San Francisco CA USA
v: +1.415.221.4810 x2466 / f: +1.415.668.2864
e: email@hidden
w: http://www.cind.research.va.gov/
-----Original Message-----
From: fed-talk-bounces+henry.mensch=email@hidden
[mailto:fed-talk-bounces+henry.mensch=email@hidden] On Behalf Of
Michael
Sent: Thursday, January 17, 2008 12:56 PM
To: email@hidden
Subject: Re: [Fed-Talk] AppleCare on federal computers
I know that all our Dell purchases came with a clause that basically
said in the case of a hard disk failure the hard drive did not return
to Dell as well as the standard three-year Dell warranty, which some
coworkers have had great success with and some coworkers will never
deal with Dell again.
A number of years ago we purchased a cluster with 13 dual Opteron
nodes from a respected vendor, the warranty covered the parts for the
first 2 or 3 years but that was not the real cost. The real cost was
the time to replace the parts--as our group does not have a tech I
had to do it myself, and the specialized extras meant soldering wires
to the motherboards. After the warranty ended we purchased eight
power supplies, we needed all of them before we started to give away
pieces of that machine. Final count 2 dead motherboard and 11 power
supplies. Apple's switch to Intel made it possible for us to start
using Mac Pro's for x86 Linux (basic requirement do to commercial
software libraries). Fortunately I have not seen failures in Apple
hardware in at least the first five years other then hard drives in a
Xserve and RAID parked in the middle of a 16 cpu SGI Origin 2400 and
later on top of an 32 cpu SGI Altix 350 (yep a bad choice, but
certainly proved the Xserve and RAID could handle it, it's only a 1
GHz G4 Xserve and it looks like I'll run it till it dies but I
already paid for a full repair kit so I may have to get rid of yet
another perfectly good Apple someday).
On Jan 17, 2008, at 2:26 PM, Dave Schroeder wrote:
> But the parts and labor for that DVD drive (which is more like over
> $100 for the part and $70/hour labor, as opposed to "$30"), ...
This I can do an analysis on as I spent about an hour talking to
AppleCare to see if this would be a user-replaceable part from their
point of view. The only option I was given was to bring the Power
Mac G5 into a Apple Store, no discussion of onsite repair or user
replaceable, I asked about the latter. I couldn't find enough of my
paperwork for AppleCare to see what it promised when I bought it,
I'll read what I have again out of curiosity.
The cost analysis was obvious for the DVD drive. I purchased a
better and more standard Pioneer DVD drive for $35 (the DVD drives in
Apple computers don't usually match anything available from the
manufacturer to the open market, the strange Hitachi DVD drive in my
snow-ball iMac has been especially an issue, at that time only one
reference to the part number could be found on the web and almost all
DVD-R media was incompatible with that DVD drive especially name
brands).
It will take me no more then 15 minutes (less time then I took to
type this email) to install and test the replacement DVD drive based
on previous experience of installing and removing CD drives from our
first Mac Pro at work when trying to work around the issues with
installing Debian Linux on a Mac Pro (the 2.6.17 and 2.6.18 kernels
are incompatible with Intel support chips not the actual DVD drive as
some people think).
The cost per hour of my time is the same if I replace the DVD drive
myself in 15 minutes or spent three hours getting to and from the
Apple Store. If by some strange chance a motherboard failure can
cause a DVD drive to reject only CD's then I'll have to put a spare
hard drive in the G5 and bring it to the store for repairs, the
probably is very tiny and my cost is low, besides having a spare DVD
drive for testing in the future.
In the same day I dealt with AppleCare I called American Standard
about a $40 faucet, with nothing more then my word they are sending
me parts (or they said they are sending parts, 10 days have not past
yet, but then they are sending me more parts then I thought I needed
so I tend to believe they are in the mail). These parts would have
cost me at least $10 at the store and that is assuming I could find
the parts. Contrast the ratios of $10 / $40 versus $35 / $2500+
(dual 2.5 GHz G5). It's easier to find someone who can successfully
replace a DVD drive then the insides of a kitchen faucet, fortunately
I can do both. I understand the issues very well, very few people
have the warranty info for their kitchen faucet, it leaks they call a
plumber at $90/hour plus parts, no warranty replacement. For a
computer the issue is reversed.
Michael
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