Any drawbacks I should consider before buying a refurbished Mac?

do it. this is a great way to save money on a computer. factory refurbished machines are held to a demanding spec, and you can assume no meaningful difference form a new one.

Considering that desktops tend to age much more gracefully than laptops, and that you’re going for the 3-year applecare, I can’t think of any drawbacks.

I have bought a three iPods and a iMac from Apple’s refurbished site and have never had any problems. Actually, all of them were cosmetically perfect. I think they might replace the case on refurbs.

But, everything I bought still works well years later. And they come with the same warranty.

All my Macs are refurbs and they’ve been great. The only potential drawback I’ve noticed is that sometimes if it ships with 1GB of RAM (for example), it’ll come with two 512MB instead of one, 1GB.

But RAM is so cheap now, its hardly a concern over the savings.

@Spargett
They do the RAM bullshit with all new Macs too. My last Intel (new) iMac came with two 256Meg sticks that are now sitting in a drawer in my desk. Apple are assholes when it comes to RAM. And OS X runs so much better with 2 Gigs. I just don’t understand why they don’t ship every Mac with 2Gigs since it is so cheap.

Could you explain the RAM issues to an idiot? I will have to buy a new desktop Mac in the spring since this one will not support Leopard. I get so confused when listening to the salesmen. What are the pitfalls and how does one avoid them? There is an Apple store here within horse and buggy distance.

And what do you mean by two 265Meg sticks? Where are you supposed to stick them? (Hossman, Kevbo, Andrew, and Bob – no smartass retorts, plz.)

Do not buy RAM from Apple (it is crazy expensive).. Buy it from crucial and install it yourself. It is very easy. I would expand but I am late for work.. Gotta go.

Johnpowell; your statement clarified nothing. Remember, I don’t do installing.

Hope that you got to work on time, however.

Here’s how it works, gailcalled:

Most computers have a couple of “slots” to put RAM, so if you have 1GB of RAM, you can either have one 1GB stick (and have one free slot) or two 512MB sticks. Apple chooses number 2, so if you want to, say, double your RAM, you need to replace 2 chips instead of one.

Johnpowell is absolutely right, don’t buy from Apple. Installing a memory chip in a computer is super simple (even for you, gailcalled… my girlfriend did it!).

Also, RAM equates to “multi-tasking brainpower.” So, more RAM means less time to open and process things and the ability to run many applications at once. More RAM is especially helpful with photo and video editing and playing games. All things being equal, more RAM means less time staring at the pretty beach ball.

If you don’t care about blazing speed and have relative patiencewith the occasional computing delay, you probably don’t need
anything more than what comes standard. Later, if you decide you need more RAM you can buy it cheaply and have a computer savvy friend install it or do it yourself in a few minutes. RAM from Apple is severely overpriced, so do go to crucial.com or similar.

@gail: the core issue is that Apple charges considerably more to install RAM than they need to. RAM is a user-upgradeable part, so you save a great deal of money by buying the RAM separately and installing yourself (or having a trusted tech-savvy friend install it) instead of having Apple install it at the factory.

RAM comes on small circuit boards with chips on them. These are called “sticks” colloquially, and they go into “slots.”

@andrew; thanks for vote of confidence, but remember that your g/f has you nearby.

@kevbo; speaking of blazing speed, for my birthday and holiday gift to myself, I am finally going to deep-six the dial-up and get DSL. And while I stare at the multi-coloured beach ball, I file my nails or paint my piggies. (I have no interest in editing videos or playing games, but would like to get video streaming.)

@cwilbur; I will talk to my computer guru about this issue. I’m makin’ a list for him and checkin’ it twice.

@all; does it count that I was able to unclog a bathroom sink yesterday w. a bent coat hanger? I fished up several unpalatable lbs of knotted hair and used dental floss. I saved $75 on plumber bill; how much RAM would that buy?

@gailcalled: almost one gigabyte.
that sounds impressive.

gailcalled: i just did the coat hanger trick the other day! it was soooo gratifying.

regarding RAM, the amount you want is really, quite seriously, the most that you can afford up to the limit of the capabilities of your computer. unlike the size of the hard drive, which can vary widely from individual computer to computer within the same model, the amount of RAM a given model of computer can use is quite specific. it’s like observing that a 747 can be a cargo plane, with only three seats, or a passenger plane with 300 seats (where seats = hard drive space), but the maximum number of bathrooms on each version of the 747 is still four. (i have no idea where that metaphor came from).

point is, find out what the maximum amount of RAM for your type of computer is, and then look up the price of that amount of RAM for your computer, and then you’ll know what it costs.

@sam: it IS amazing what falls into the plumbing and stays there, isn’t it? (And did you know that you can unclog a kitchen disposal w. a broomstick and some muscle, if the reset button doesn’t work, due to, say, the nickel that fell in and got partly ground up.)

When I am ready to buy, I will simply call on you guys. So the size of hard drive= seats on a 747 and the RAM = numbers of bathrooms? That can’t be right.

I’m not sure the analogy works, so I’m going to avoid the analogy altogether.

Your computer wants to use a great deal of RAM, probably more than you have installed. It makes up for this by treating some of your hard disk as ersatz RAM,and keeping only the most important and frequently used things in actual RAM. When it needs to use something that isn’t in actual RAM, it needs to copy it from ersatz RAM to actual RAM before it can use it.

So the optimal amount of RAM depends on your usage patterns. If you tend to use one program at a time, you need less than if you tend to flit back and forth from Mail to Safari to Word (or Pages) to Adium to Terminal. See, if you have all of those open, but you’re only using Safari, all the others get copied out to ersatz RAM, and since you’re not actively using them, you don’t notice the lag that follows switching to another program. On the other hand, if you are in Safari and switch to Mail, the computer needs to make sure that all the important bits of Mail are in real RAM, not ersatz RAM, and that causes a delay if they aren’t.

As a practical rule of thumb, it’s a good idea to get as much RAM as your computer can handle, because it’s the cheapest way to boost performance. The advice, though, is to do this cheaply: if you ask Apple to do it before they ship you the computer, they’ll charge significantly more than it would cost to do it yourself.

If you want to ask more specific questions when purchase time approaches, feel free, of course, but that’s the general theory.

Oh, and if you talk to other techical people about this, the correct term for “ersatz RAM” is “virtual memory” or “swap space,” but both those terms are fairly opaque for non-cognoscenti.

@ all: thanks; this is a bit like wanting to learn French. Instead of starting with, “La plume de ma tante,” I get the passé simple subjonctif as the lesson of the day.

However, I will persevere, or learn how to turn $100 into $200 in a week. Either I will have to pay Apple or my Guru.

Maybe the economy will perk up in the spring and my stocks will be worth more…

Regarding the way Apple ships RAM (two 512MB sticks instead of one 1GB stick), I have read claims that for some reason matched sticks make for a faster system. Something about how the system treated two equal RAM sticks as opposed to just one.

Some (older?) Macs actually required you to do this, not sure if that is the case anymore.

I had to return my MacBook Pro the same day it arrived because the sound card was making a horrible screeching noise. It seemed strange to me that Apple missed could miss something like that during their testing prior to shipping it to me. What it amounted to was waiting a day while Apple while they shipped their Apple approved “return box”. I was a bit miffed because the box was identical to the one it shipped in, but I followed their instructions and did as I was told. The result: they shipped it back to me two days later, presumably in another new box and everything has been fine since. Apple’s customer service was nice, and made the letdown of having to send it back a bit less painful. While I was on the phone with their rep. the gentleman indicated that the MacBook I had purchased was only one month old at the time and that it had only one previous owner – I assumed they returned it because of the sound card issue. All that being said I can confirm that I would continue to buy refurbished Apple products.

Does anyone know that if you upgrade RAM on your own, does that void your AppleCare warranty?

upgrading RAM does not void your warantee.