Refursbished MacBooks

opethdisciple

opethdisciple

opethdisciple

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Joined
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London
We want to buy some MacBooks for people in the office.

We cant afford new ones so I asked my supplier to come up with quotes for refurbs.

He came up with these:

A1 Apple MacBook Air - Core i5-5250U (1.6GHz/2.7GHz/3MB) 4GB 128GB SSD 11.6" HD LED Mac OS X 10.10 Yosemite NO-OD Intel HD 6000 webcam BT 4.0 2xUSB 3.0 TBOLT BK 3MTH1.08kg (9Hours)£550

A2 Apple MacBook Pro Aluminium 13.3" - Core i5 (2.5GHz/3.1GHz) 4GB DDR3 (8GB) 500GB 13.3" (1280x800) LED DVDSM Intel HD 4000 webcam BT 4.0 2xUSB 3.0 TBOLT Firewire 3MT (7Hours) £600

A1 Apple MacBook Pro Aluminum - Core i5 (2.5GHz/3.1GHz) 4GB DDR3 (8GB) 500GB 13.3" (1280x800) LED Mac OS X 10.7 Lion DVDSM Intel HD 4000 webcam BT 4.0 2xUSB 3.0 TBOLT Firewire 3MT (7Hours)
£650

What do you reckon?

The first one maybe is the best? 9 hours battery life, Mac OSX 10.10 meaning it's upgradable to latest OSx and the cheapest.

It's just for office use.
 
First question. Why do you want to buy Macbooks?

No one will want to spend every working day staring at an 11.6" screen.
 
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All the prices seem a bit steep if I'm honest. Low specs / old specs.

But at least with the lower two MacBook Pros you could upgrade the RAM and put a SSD in there.
 
Why do they need a macbook for travel?

As has already been said, they are a couple of generations old and seem a bit expensive that said Apple gear holds its value.

Have you checked the Apple refurb section, that way it will be a current gen one and it may just fit your budget.
 
Go in store and ask to speak to Apple business team.
They can lease the MacBooks to you with a 20% discount - you pay the remaining 80% over 2 years interest free and then either pay the 20% and keep or return them for new models.
 
Yeah those prices are not good for what you are getting. They are about £200 overpriced each I reckon. Macbooks don't hold their value as well as they used to but the ones he is trying to sell you are very out of date. You would want to spend at least another few hundred to upgrade them with ram/hd and you still haven't got a good screen/battery.
 
Alpherah said:
Go in store and ask to speak to Apple business team.
They can lease the MacBooks to you with a 20% discount - you pay the remaining 80% over 2 years interest free and then either pay the 20% and keep or return them for new models.
Click to expand...

This caught my attention so I thought I'd give Apple a call and speak to a member of their business team and it turns out that this is only partially correct.

Yes they'll give you the 20% discount and the remaining 80% is spread over the 24 month term however it's not simply a case of paying 20% and keeping the device. I was told this finance option is designed purely as a rental agreement and the optional final payment to keep the device will be made prohibitively high so that it doesn't make sense to keep it.
 
fez said:
Yeah those prices are not good for what you are getting. They are about £200 overpriced each I reckon. Macbooks don't hold their value as well as they used to but the ones he is trying to sell you are very out of date. You would want to spend at least another few hundred to upgrade them with ram/hd and you still haven't got a good screen/battery.
Click to expand...

Out of date?

This one which is the one we've gone for seems to be the same as what Apple are currently selling for around £749.

A1 Apple MacBook Air - Core i5-5250U (1.6GHz/2.7GHz/3MB) 4GB 128GB SSD 11.6" HD LED Mac OS X 10.10 Yosemite NO-OD Intel HD 6000 webcam BT 4.0 2xUSB 3.0 TBOLT BK 3MTH1.08kg (9Hours) £550

The CPU alone only launched Q1 2015.
 
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opethdisciple said:
Out of date?

This one which is the one we've gone for seems to be the same as what Apple are currently selling for around £749.

A1 Apple MacBook Air - Core i5-5250U (1.6GHz/2.7GHz/3MB) 4GB 128GB SSD 11.6" HD LED Mac OS X 10.10 Yosemite NO-OD Intel HD 6000 webcam BT 4.0 2xUSB 3.0 TBOLT BK 3MTH1.08kg (9Hours) £550

The CPU alone only launched Q1 2015.
Click to expand...

They don't sell for that much second hand as they are pretty old hardware and haven't been updated in a long time. It also depends on what "refurbished" means. Apple refurbs are usually people that have returned them within the 14 days or whatever it is after you buy. These could be over a year old with many cycles on the batteries.

You can pick these up from various places for about £600 brand new at any rate. As I said though, its hard to say unless we have more info. Refurbished (certainly with most macs) is a bit of oxymoron. They are almost impossible to fix if anything is wrong.
 
The screens on the non retina MacBooks are extremely dated, those prices don't seem particularly good to me considering you could buy a brand spanker MBPr for £899?

The refurbed MBPr direct from Apple come in just over £700 as well, at least they were last time I looked. (If you can get stock obviously).
 
cant you find 13" macbook air? they should be in similar price range. the 13" air offer higher screen resolution than the Pro
 
opethdisciple said:
Out of date?

A1 Apple MacBook Air - Core i5-5250U (1.6GHz/2.7GHz/3MB) 4GB 128GB SSD 11.6" HD LED Mac OS X 10.10 Yosemite NO-OD Intel HD 6000 webcam BT 4.0 2xUSB 3.0 TBOLT BK 3MTH1.08kg (9Hours) £550
Click to expand...

Feek said:
I'd only buy a refurb Mac direct from Apple.
Click to expand...

What Feek said,especially that this very laptop directly from Apple Refurbished store costs £525 + VAT, and it's guaranteed to be like new/pristine rather than A1 used.
 
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