Best price for MacBook?

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gav240z

gav240z

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Hi everyone,
What's the cheapest way to obtain a MacBook Pro? I was thinking of going to New York just to buy one from the US and see NY as I've never been, but is there a better way?

Has anyone used the finance option, is there anything to look out for?

I was considering getting a cheap Dell laptop until I can afford a proper MacBook Pro.
 
mneylon

mneylon

Administrator
Staff member
The refurb ones are a lot cheaper than the full price ones
 
Forbairt

Forbairt

Teaching / Designing / Developing
gav240z said:
Has anyone used the finance option, is there anything to look out for?

I was considering getting a cheap Dell laptop until I can afford a proper MacBook Pro.
Click to expand...

Finance option will end up costing you more in the long run though ? Personally as an individual I'd steer clear of that.

I use a dell laptop I got relatively cheap and I'm over the moon with it. I picked it up from a dell refurbishment crowd in the uk. I went with a slightly older model but a high end older model.
Bought it through europc.co.uk sometimes they've got great offers.

Depending on your needs I'd steer clear of the low end dells. with their integrated graphics cards they suddenly become a nightmare to use (load any flash on a webpage and the fans start whirring madly) that said I've not looked at any of the dells in recent times.

The next apple event is occurring in the next few days .. so picking up a second hand one might be an option ? bung on an extra 2 years of applecare and away you go ...

Or as Michele said look at getting a refurbished one (once you've got applecare you're taken care of)
 
Cormac

Cormac

New Member
As Mr. Menace said, if you're planning on going state side then pick up any MB over there.

But if you're not then the Refurb Store is your next best bet. I purchased a MacBook from the Refurb Store approx seven months ago with a 20% discount. It only had 512MB of RAM but I purchased 2GBs for only $70 from Crucial. It's a very fast laptop.

Do you actually need a MacBook Pro? I have used the Pro and the MacBook models and to be honest there is very little difference between the two. Not enough to merit the extra costs anyway. You can customise the MacBook to have a greater spec than the Pro for a fraction of the cost by purchasing upgrades from third party websites. RAM is so cheap now that processor power isn't the most important factor for a 'quick' machine, and HDs are ridiculously cheap too.

The MacBooks are due an upgrade in the coming weeks too. Might be something to hold out for...
 
Forbairt

Forbairt

Teaching / Designing / Developing
jumping onto the thread again ... just booked flights for new york in april .. so it looks like I'll be heading to an apple store .. I await the next apple event to see what I'll be buying ...

The price difference is CRAZY ... the high end macbook is 1,449.00 on the apple store here ... in the us its 1000 euro though its late so my prices could be off.

(on a side note ... flights to new york from shannon at the moment in april are costing around 330 eur)
 
gav240z

gav240z

New Member
Refurb ones sound good.

Yeah I've looked at refurb ones, problem is there is hardly ever one listed on the Apple.ie site.

I was looking at a MacBook Pro mainly because I want to use Photoshop and I do alot of web design work. I'm not sure what a standard MacBook is like without the NVidia card.

I guess it might be worth looking into a second hand Macbook and just upgrading the ram as mentioned.

If I get a Dell Laptop I'd probably want to use Ubuntu Linux (So sick of windows) but running photoshop on that is a mission.

Thanks for the advice.
 
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