Are there other Mac users here? Did you guys all bring your Mac from overseas or buy them here on the island?
So my trusty black Macbook is getting a little long in the tooth and since the new models just came out in the States 3 days ago I’m itching to ditch this guy and getting a new one OR spending some money on upgrades to keep this one going.
I’m thinking about upgrading the HDD to a 7200rpm 500GB drive and swapping out the memory for 2x2GB sticks. However, I have AppleCare coverage (purchased from the US) on the machine and it’s apparently worldwide and has yet to expire. Because of this, I’m a little wary about upgrading and possibly getting denied coverage here in Taiwan. Has anyone upgraded their machine and needed a service from an AppleCare authorized shop here? Do they give you grief about anything at all?
I’ve been using a PowerBook G4, purchased in Taiwan, for almost five years now and I’m hoping it holds out long enough to get a iMac around Christmas time. I do NOT have AppleCare and that hasn’t been an issue.
I’ve had things go wrong: I needed to get the hard drive replaced when it was around one year old; I’ve had the DVD drive replaced as well, and RAM added. I can’t remember the numbers now, but as far as I can recall all those fixes haven’t come anywhere near the cost of AppleCare.
The key thing to keep in mind for electronics in Taiwan: parts aren’t that different in price from North America. Labour, however, is FAR cheaper (sometimes negligible enough that I’ll try to find an excuse to pay them more!).
In other words, if you’re staying in Taiwan, I wouldn’t worry about losing the AppleCare. (OK, so I didn’t directly answer your question, but I am suggesting “don’t worry too much about it”)
One must remember that insurance for companies is profitable as by average the cost of repair must be lower than the insurance premium. I’ll go without and take my chances.
I have a friend with applecare and he’s not too chuffed to say the least. His Pingwor had a cracked case due to heat damage and they won’t replace the case under applecare. He recently had a software problem which also is not covered under applecare. He’s beginning to wonder what he paid for. It turned out though that after he took it to the place I purchased mine, they fixed his software problem for free. Nice chaps there are in the world after all! Otherwise another shop was going to charge him 1,500NT for a software problem that was part of the original installation when he purchased it.
My iMac has recently had some sort of hissy fit - error 4hdd/11/40000004: SATA(0,0) according to the hardware test - and so I’m looking for a vendor who will wipe the tears from my eyes and generally be awesome.
I bought my black Macbook in the States - which is why I’m wondering if they will have an issue if something did go bad and I needed it serviced. I’ve had one small incident with my Nokia phone (also bought in the US) and Nokia Care Taiwan (the one near Shandao Temple MRT station) tried to weasel out of servicing it under warranty and wanting to charge extra because it was “shui huao” (“gray market”) stuff even though I bought it at the NokiaUSA flagship store in NYC and that they also currently sell identical phones in Taiwan aside from a difference in radio band.
I got my MacBook Pro in Taichung at the NOVA down there.
For the black MacBook you can upgrade the RAM yourself and it won’t void your AppleCare. It’s really easy for that model. Not sure about the HDD. For the MBP it requires a lot more work to swap the HDD so I went to the Apple store near Guang Hua and upgraded to a 7200/320 GB drive. That was the largest they had at the time so not sure if it’s possible to get a 2.5" 500GB now?
I do have the AppleCare and am thinking of taking it in because the battery life is down to like 30 min…not very good. I never move it from my house these days but would like to…anyone ever replaced a battery under AppleCare?
catfish, you’ve probably had this issue resolved by now but anyway, I’ll add, … in my ten years of being a mac customer in Taiwan, I can say the service at the Bade rd store in Gongguan (old Jinhua store) is very, very good. I think it was ‘alien’ that first spoke of them. What ever happened to her? Anyway, the Bade boys, great bunch of guys. I’ll never forget the day I watched an ant crawl through a gap on the side of my macbook only to fry itself behind my LCD screen. The apple store in the US told me (via forum post on apple.com) that this wasn’t under applecare and I’d need to fork out $$$$$ for a new screen. Apparently apple US, and possibly everywhere else, don’t cater for ‘ants crawling behind screens’ . Fortunately for me, the Taiwanese guys were more understanding to the common ‘kitchen ant’ problem affecting expats here
This is just one story. I’ve got quite a few. I’m sure they’ll turn a blind eye if one needed to be turned.
