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Been freelance for a year but tied to a desktop tower. Looking at getting a macbook pro (13 or 15") either second-hand, refurb or new.
I know they don't discount but I'm sure all you creative bikers have come across this dilemma before.
Would be for general design work and getting better at web design. Just always worried about buying second hand in case it breaks.
Cheers
refurb from apple with warrantee
[url= http://store.apple.com/uk/browse/home/specialdeals/mac/macbook_pro ]http://store.apple.com/uk/browse/home/specialdeals/mac/macbook_pro[/url]
if you had been a few days earlier with your request, you could have had my 13" MBP. I just bought a 13" retina one and sold on the old one to another freelancer...
Rachel
Academic store - this is the link for the OU branch
That's how I got my Macbook Pro, saved about £150. You can also get the discounted Applecare extended warranty for about £50 rather than the £200 or so it normally costs.
how do you get one on the OU? Would I have to enrol in a course?
grueller - Member
how do you get one on the OU? Would I have to enrol in a course?
POSTED 1 HOUR AGO # REPORT-POST
At no part in the purchase process do they ask for proof of being a student.
I've had a warranty issue with a MB Air which I bought and went faulty and they didn't ask me then either.
BUT I am enrolled on an OU course, so it wouldn't matter to me if later on down the line eg for another warranty issue that they did need proof.
TBH, I doubt they'll ever check or care.
I got one via the student link last month, they also chucked in 3 years Apple care, they didn't ask if I was a student.
Have bought from a company called Scrumpymacs before - good service and good machine. A bit hit and miss whether they have exactly what you want or not....
[url= http://www.scrumpymacs.co.uk/ ]Linky[/url]
discount?
look out for vouchers to get discounted John Lewis vouchers, then buy with those
Buy the cheapest in the range and upgrade the HDD to SSD and increase the memory yourself. Without SSD and 8GB they're not really that quick IMO.
I put a Vertex 4 SSD in mine with 8GB for approx £185. Way cheaper than speccing it from Apple in that configuration.
I bought mine out here in the US pretty cheap and then did the 8 Gb RAM and SSD on my own.
Captainslow - be careful assuming you can do that on new MacBooks - both the Air and the Retina are extremely difficult to upgrade RAM.
edit - which is a pain as 16GB would be kind of handy on occasion...
Rachel
hmm, I may have to trawl ebay for a while as well as checking at the refurb store and asking around. Tickets to the states are a bit pricey!
Cheers
It would be a shame if you can't upgrade RAM in the Air and Retina - worth looking in to/confirming. Certainly in the "standard" MBP, upgrading to an SSD and decent amount of RAM is a must. I nearly threw mine in the bin before doing that (and now love it).
There is no way you can buy a decent Macbook cheaper than what you can through the education store, fact! They come with 3 years Applecare too which would normally cost about £300...some folk think it has been reduced to a year but that is wrong, the extra you can pay is to upgrade to an extra two years telephone support, not the extra two years warranty!
I was looking at second hand 15" MBP's and to buy one with a decent graphics card was going to cost over a grand...pointless when you can buy the basic 15" for £1280 + the Applecare through the Education store.
The other option would be to look on Amazon, Apple upgraded the processor specs yesterday so many places are having to reduce the prices of what they had in stock. These 'older' models are only 0.1GHz slower!
EDIT: Oh, and whatever you do, don't buy from eBay if the deal seems too good to be true! I did and I'm waiting for eBay to refund my money (over £1000)...I've already waited more than a fortnight now! 🙁
jef - the reason i went for the MBP (not the retina or MBA) was because it was user serviceable. To get the smaller form factor of the retina and the MBA Apple have saved space by soldering memory etc direct to the mobo.
As Rachel also points out above - only the MBP is user serviceable - always research before purchase. The advantage in this is not only upgrades but fixing it if it goes wrong at a later date.
I thought the stock MBP pro was pretty crap before I upgraded it. 8GB is plenty for me as I'm only running one VM, one RDP session, one citrix session and the usual iTunes, Mail (and office 2011), web etc. If you genuinely need 16GB it'd probably melt the table anyway 🙂
If you're coming from a windows desktop, one word of warning - MS office doesn't have feature parity between the win variant and the os x variant. O2011 is very limited in comparison, with none of the nice plugins to evernote, drag to calendar, todo bar etc (unless anyone can point to a reliable applescript)?
(applescript is pretty cool)
Dont get me wrong, i like my MBP, it's a nice piece of HW, works ok but couldn't describe it as more stable or faster than a well built win system.
Some good tips above by the sound of it.
Any holidays planned soon? I got one at PC World, Heathrow and saved well over £100 a few years ago.
cheers chaps, fingers crossed on my trawl.
There is no way you can buy a decent Macbook cheaper than what you can through the education store, fact!
I stamped my feet at whined like a child* until I was issued with one for work - which is cheaper, for me, than buying from the education store.
*not really, i asked nicely over and over and over and over again.
Ebay, look for one with apple care left on it.
Got my 2010 one for £450 with 500gb hard drive and 8gb.
But it did take a while to such for one that was a good deal.
Not being funny but if you have been a freelance designer for a year surely you can stretch to a MBP? Why not get it on interest free over a year or lease which a lot of businesses do.
Cheapest way? Steal one.
HTH.