I’m in the market for a refurbished MacBook Pro, but I have no idea what to look for. What can you tell me about choosing a Mac? What do I look for? What do I stay away from? What is there that adds to the price but has no legitimate purpose?
The smartest place to get a refurbished MacBook Pro is from Apple’s online refurbished store. Go to store.apple.com, and then scroll down the page looking for Refurbished Mac toward the bottom of the left-hand sidebar.
Apple’s refurbished store has a rotating inventory, so you’ll see Macs added and Macs disappear -- if they don’t have exactly what you want, keep checking back. All those Macs come with the same one-year warranty as a brand-new Mac, and they’re checked thoroughly by Apple before being sold, so it’s a much safer investment than, say, eBay or Craigslist where you’re buying from another individual.
Anyway, to choose a MacBook Pro, the first thing you’ll consider is screen size. The 13-inch is portable, the 17-inch is expansive, and the 15-inch is a sweet spot right in between. We love the 15 and 13, but it’s really a personal preference. Then you can compare hard drive sizes -- bigger is better, of course. Same with RAM, although if a machine turns out to not have enough RAM, that’s relatively easy to add yourself after the fact and won’t void the warranty.
Apple’s MacBook Pro line is pretty standardized, so you don’t have to worry about price-bumping add-ons for the most part. (You can’t, for example, opt for a MacBook Pro without an SD card slot and save $50.) The only “upsell” that could cost you extra money is if one of the MacBook Pros for sale has an SSD, or solid-state disk, instead of a regular hard drive (HDD). Solid-state disks are made from nonmoving flash memory, so they’re faster, but they’re also more expensive and have smaller capacities, so if you see a Pro with a 128GB SSD and you’re wondering why it’s more expensive than another with a 320GB hard drive, that’s why. You’ll probably be happier with a bigger hard drive, so steer clear of the SSD unless you know you really want it.
The other thing that might not matter so much to you is the processor type and speed. From newest to oldest, the processors you’ll encounter are Core i7, Core i5, Core i3, and Core 2 Duo. A newer processor with a faster clock speed is preferable, especially if you do heavy-duty stuff like lots of video editing, heavy photo editing, gaming, and so on. But if you’re just using your Mac for general computing tasks, you probably won’t notice that much of a difference. Just get the nicest one you can afford. And welcome a new Mac to your Mac life!
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russell.ivey
April 21, 2011 at 10:05am
There are many more options when buying a "refurbished mac" depending on the meaning of refurbished. Powermax, Megamacs, Gainsaver, and several other retailers offer used macs which have been inspected, cleaned, and offer replacement hardware. A comparision of Apple with the other alternatives would be quite useful, unless you consider the Mac store the ONLY option.
mac_daddy
April 20, 2011 at 8:45pm
Graphics are a huge deal! I believe that they are another exceedingly important part of the picking process. From resizing a picture to straight up online domination in your favorite video game, the graphics chip is a big deal. I have an integrated graphics card and it doesn't run much of anything, and the lag is a little annoying. Definitely shoot for the best graphics you can afford, in addition to all of the other non-upgradeables that come in our beastly machines (Macs).
Zbrosmom
April 19, 2011 at 10:11pm
These nice folks always give sound advice...listen and you won't be sorry. "Bigger is better, & faster = happier customer".
{:)
