OK, it's down to the wire now. Thanks, Artie, for letting me know about the drop in price on the computer I want!

Now when push comes to shove everybody, if you were able to buy the Mac of your choice refurbished with a full year's warranty from Apple plus the ability to buy Applecare if you want - or buy a new Mac of the same model open box with a six month warranty remaining (same year and model) and the ability to buy Applecare should you choose, which would you pick and why.

I am going to weigh everything I read and then make my decision today or tomorrow.

I don't particularly trust LA Computer Company's story, and an Apple refurb is pretty much the same as a new machine, so I"d go with Apple.

(Has LA's price on their machine come down, as it should have, now that it's no longer current merchandise?)

It still has a 6 month warranty. I kinda trust him. Anyway, I contacted him by email and told him what the refurbished ones were down to and that I was going to bounce this choice off of my friends on a forum. We will see. Thanks for your input, Artie.

I don't know anything about LA Computer one way or the other, but I have had factory rebuilt Macs, iPhones, and even an Apple Watch (after I ran over the original with a trailer) either direct from Apple or purchased through Small Dog Electronics and I have never had a problem with any of them. I really appreciate the fact they come in factory original packaging with the same warranty and eligibility for AppleCare as a new machine. Sometimes you can get a top of the line configuration at the price of a mid range machine, but what you see is what your get and may not be there five minutes from now.

My iMac is a refurbished model and I have had no trouble with it. It saved me a few hundred dollars off the price of a new one, and I used the savings to buy more RAM and a couple of accessories. If I were to start over, I would buy it again.

That's reassuring. Thanks.

Thanks Jon. More good news.

Let me add my 2 cents to your question as well......not only do you see positive input for the Apple refurbished machines from our most prolific members, but you also see positive input from the Moderators as well.

I've made MANY refurb purchases and had ZERO issues over the past MANY MANY years. If it was my choice in your circumstances, I too would go with an Apple refurbished Mac to fill this purchase.

Thank you! Good to know.

I'm not sure why you don't trust the story since he explained about the touch bar and the dates and that it has a 6 month warranty left. But, I guess you never know.

Also, yes he brought his prices down. The open box Mac is now $999 and he has a new one (I think he means the same model but I'm not sure) that is now $1099.

My other thought is even if he has a new one or two from 2015, would there be problems since they have been in hibernation all this time?

I"m a natural born skeptic, and to my way of thinking, toy lovers...well...they love their toys, and they buy them without thinking about it. Toy lovers don't buy low-priced, year old merchandise one day and decide they really want the newest, significantly more expensive toy the next day (and that sort of behavior would be unusual for a shopper, too). I mean, it's not out of the question, merely pretty unlikely...I think. (joemike is our resident toy lover ; I wonder what his take on it is?)

I did a bit of research and came up with...


and


...the point of all that being that the MBP LA is calling "Brand New Open Box" would be in the Refurbished Store if Apple were selling it.

Was this MBP returned for the reason proffered, or was it returned because it was defective? We'll never know, but the fact that it's been hanging around since January suggests that my skepticism is shared by others.

Bottom line is that the LA "Brand New Open Box" MBP would cost you $70 and 5 or 6 months of AppleCare more than a theoretically identical Apple refurb. Also, the LA machine has got a 128 GB SSD, and you'd prefer a 256 GB drive, which you can wait for if you go the Apple route.

Yep, LA's got two of the same machines posted...the open box one you've been looking at ($999) and and a "real" brand new one ($1099).

I'm not qualified to say whether there'd be any problems with a machine that's been "in hibernation all this time", but I'll remind you that the MBP in question may have been manufactured as recently as January 2017, so "all this time" may not encompass very much time at all. (The refurbished 2010 MBP I bought in 2013 had been manufactured no less than 26 months earlier and was none the worse for it.)

I'd buy the refurbished machine from Apple. Why? Because I've bought many refurbished items from Apple over the years and have never had any problems.

"...the point of all that being that the MBP LA is calling "Brand New Open Box" would be in the Refurbished Store if Apple were selling it."

(I don't know how to make those box quotes.) What you said above helps put things in perspective.

"you'd prefer a 256 GB drive, which you can wait for if you go the Apple route."

What do you mean by WAIT? Do you think the 256 GB ones will come way down, too, pretty soon?

The Refurb Store is a crap-shoot, Rita.

Since the 128 GB model is the stock model it's going to turn up most often, but a "configured" 256 GB model will come down the pipe for about $100 more sooner or later. (When the base price comes down, the configured prices come down commensurately.) Precisely when that may happen, though, is anybody's guess, and it may even be while you're asleep and be gone before you wake up. (I bought my daughter's refurb for her, because I was better able to keep tabs on the store than she was.)

(You make the "box quotes" using the quotes - 5th from the right - button on the response page.)

Well, I won't worry about taking my time if I decide to wait for that. Also, I am talking about partial quotes. I know how to hit "quote" and then type my stuff responding to it just not how to separate out parts of what I want to respond to like you do.

Don't you ever go to bed?

I'm going to use "code" tags to show you what I do, because they negate the "quote" tabs, but you should never use them.


I'll now delete the "code" tags...



And to nest a quote I do like so...


which resolves like so...



Hitting "Preview Post" frequently as you type shows you if you've screwed up and enables you to see where, but the learning curve is a frustrating one.

I sleep in shifts...when my body allows me to; back to bed now.

(Since the 2015's are newly discontinued you've got some time to play the waiting game, but the supply will eventually dry up, so you've got to keep on top of it and check the Refurbished Store neurotically.)

I do use preview post. It does help.

Sleeping in shifts. That makes sense as I see all the different hours you post here.

No problem checking the refurbished store neurotically. I will be doing that. If I could get the 256?? gb or just a little more money for the same model, I will be thrilled.

Wow, forget the separate quoting stuff. Too much work!


Hitting "Preview Post" frequently as you type shows you if you've screwed up and enables you to see where, but the learning curve is a frustrating one.

I sleep in shifts...when my body allows me to; back to bed now.

(Since the 2015's are newly discontinued you've got some time to play the waiting game, but the supply will eventually dry up, so you've got to keep on top of it and check the Refurbished Store neurotically.) [/quote]

When the 256 GB MBP you want was listed before the price reduction it was $100 more than the 128 GB model, and I expect that that will hold true now.

I"m practiced in the "separate quoting stuff", and it's too much work for me; I'm not surprised that you're throwing in the towel.

OK, so I'll expect about $100.00 difference and be happy with that. I noticed some of the new mac notebooks have less ghz than the old ones.

I imagine that's because they've got newer, more efficient processors, but someone who's either got expertise or reads a lot will have to provide a definitive answer.

I thought the higher the number, the faster. We'll just have to wait and see what someone else's input is.

I didn't look to see specifically what you were referring to, so maybe it's about heat control, i.e. some machines like MacBooks and MacBook Airs are so thin that faster processors would generate more heat than they could handle.

If newer Macs of the same model have "slower" processors than their predecessors, that could be efficiency...maybe.

To quote the old country store philosopher, "Well now I wouldn't say that." The efficiency gains may have more to do with thermal efficiency (lower heat and longer battery life) than speed. When it comes to overall speed you have to look closely at lots of things other than clock speed. For example

• the number of processing cores typically 2 or 4 — typically the more cores the more total work the computer will be able to perform in a given span of time but only if the apps are write to take advantage of the additional cores
• Is it an i5 or i7 model — by and large the i7 will have an edge over i5
• the processor generation — again this has far more to do with power consumption than speed, but each new generation has at least some speed boost. (Thus the big news about the Kaby Lake processors in the just announced MacBook Pros is significantly longer battery life rather than more speed.)
• The ultra fast SSDs in the new models will have far more impact on overall system performance than any increase in CPU clock rate.

In the end clock rate is a poor measure of system performance in today's computers and even test suites can be misleading as any test suite tends to emphasize pro apps and never come close to my normal uses or any one else I know.

IMHO given Plantsower's self avowed usage pattern any Mac made in the past two or three years will easily be more than adequate for her needs and she is unlikely to be able to detect any discernible differences in processors, cores, or speed. Differences in storage devices (HD, Fusion, SSD) on the other hand will be very noticeable to almost anyone.

All that said, I will almost always go for the fastest processor clock rate and the most cores in the chosen computer model and with the maximum memory as together those are most likely to assure adequate performance for the next four or five years. Beyond that my crystal ball is unreliable if not totally busted. (I used to include big storage capacity in my specifications, but optimizing storage via iCloud, my local storage needs are, for the first time in my computer life, being reduced.)

Uh... My mouth is still hanging open.

The last time I bought my Macbook Pro I asked around here, went to Best Buy and just got it. I think I am maybe being too anal about this. Seeing as I haven't even used 50 gb on my 500 gb HD in 5 years and my habits aren't likely to change much, I should probably just get the MF839LL/A I've been looking at with the 125 gb and 8 gb RAM (double what I have) and be done with it.

I promised the owner of LA computers I would let him know what I am doing since he's given me a lot of his time. He wants me to call him so he can give me all the ins and outs of stuff, but I've pretty much gotten it here. He admitted the $929.00 price for the refurbished one is a good price. I don't know why I am putting this off. If I couldn't have started up my Mac via an external drive, I would already have purchased something!! Geez, someone start a fire under me!!

FIRE!!!

As I type, there are both 128 GB and 256 GB machines listed in the Refurbished Store, but the 256 GB model is $170 more than the one with 128 GB, not just $100.

Hmmm... I thought the SSD upgrade cost only $100 before the price drop.

Which is why I backed away from it in my next post.

I signed up at Refurbme.com. You give them your filters like cost, memory needs, etc., and where you want to buy it, and they email you when it becomes available. That will save me some checking though I will check from time to time anyway at the Apple refurbished store.

Out of curiosity, I visited refurb.me, and it was immediately evident that their listing of 13" MBPs available from the Apple Refurb Store is seriously incomplete, and more curious, any machine for which both sites show "Save $xxx", their posted saving is exactly $100 more than Apple's...obviously not an especially reliable source of info.

By the way, I'm not sure what you're thinking at this point, but I continue to strongly advise that you not buy from LA; the extra $70 is no big deal, because the guy's been helpful, but foregoing 5 months or so of AppleCare without its being a necessity is, in my opinion, not a particularly wise thing to do.

I would never advise anyone NOT to buy from LA because I prefer to put a positive spin on things. If you are going to buy a refurbished/used MacBook I would strongly urge you to buy from Small Dog Electronics, Apple, or any vendor that sells factory rebuilt units that come with the same warranty as a new MacBook Pro.

Artie and I have been known to have different opinions but on this we are of like mind. I once had an iPad that could only be called a lemon and after three complete failures requiring parts replacement to fix Apple not only replaced the iMac entirely, they replaced it with a newer model and because mine had been top of the line when I bought it, they replaced it not with a comparable iMac but with the top of the newer model line that was significantly more powerful. IMHO the extra warranty coverage is well worth a lot more than $70. By-the-way I would buy AppleCare as well.

That may be, but when I put in my filters, the one I want for $929.00 at Apple did show up. I can't explain about the rest. Now I've got that one filtered for a price drop.

Yes, I am already convinced that refurbished is the way to go. I know you meant iMac all the way through but you started out talking about an iPad (lemon) so I was a little confused for a second there.

I always get the warranty. The cheapest I could find was at LA Computer for either $185 or $189, can't remember. If you know of a cheaper one for a Macbook Pro I am listening.

I've heard great replacement stories and I've also heard (read) horror stories where they got no satisfaction at all with an obvious lemon. Maybe it just matters which store you go to or which rep you talk to on the phone. I have learned that when I don't get what I want from a company to just call back until I can find someone who will cooperate and be more helpful.

Yeah, I saw the $929 model, but I pointed out that some of the others are missing because it suggests the possibility that the $929 may be missing at some point. For what it's worth, though, it's been there every time I've looked. (It seems like the ones most likely to be missing are those for which Apple doesn't enumerate the price break.)

If you're waiting for the price to come down from $929, I think you're wasting your time; I followed your current MBP for a few months from when it became the $929 model to its virtual disappearance, and its price never varied from $929.

(Wow! LA's AppleCare prices are really great...significantly less than the going price for both the 13 and 15" MBPs. Thanks for the tip. )

Artie: I emailed the guy at LA Computer about his Applecare products because I don't know if he sells them separately or not. I'll let you know. Otherwise I guess I will have to go back to B&H Photo in New York. The prices there used to be better but now they are over $200 for Macbook Pros.

Thanks for the thought, Rita, but I've got no need for AppleCare at the moment, and I hope things stay that way for a bunch of years. (I checked LA's website, and it looks like they sell AppleCare to all comers.)

B&H earned itself a really bad name for abusing their black and Latino workers who are now unionized. Amazon's prices were the same as theirs the last few times I looked, and that's where I bought. (But, man, I hate the way Amazon strings you out on the shipping to get you to either go Prime or pay for an upgrade. )

I hate that about Amazon, too. But, I have a friend with Prime and when I need something from Prime, she buys it and I reimburse her via Paypal. That works for both of us.