AppleCare – Is it worth it? I think so.

27 11 2009

Have you ever found yourself wondering whether that AppleCare you purchased was worth the money — I know I would have if I’d had to pay the full price (fortunately as a student it was only around £40). Or perhaps you’re about to buy a mac and you’re wondering whether you should get AppleCare for it.

Before I get started, I should mention that AppleCare is just Apple’s name for the 3 year guarantee extension (giving you a total of 3 years protection) offered for Mac computers.

From my mac experience, getting AppleCare was definitely worth it; and that would still apply if I had to pay the full price of (£273) here’s why:

I’ve had 2 replacement batteries – they would have cost nearly £200; and just recently I had the logic board of my MacBook Pro replaced due to the video card being defective and something else that was wrong with the EFI firmware. That last repair would have cost me a whopping £870.70! I could buy a new mac for that much!!

As I pointed out on twitter, after this last repair my mac came back looking a whole lot better than when I took it in. I had replaced the hard drive myself (which with my model isn’t a user-servicable part) and not really put the case back together properly. In fact, I had broken a section of the case above the DVD drive and it bulged out.
Rather nicely, that’s been fixed, and the screw I lost during the process has been replaced. Also, one of the feet that keep the laptop off of a table had come off at some point.
That hadn’t been replaced when I picked up my computer, so I mentioned it before leaving. The guy popped out to the back of the store and my computer came back with all 4 feet. Awesome.

So yeah. To sum up…. it’s definitely worth getting AppleCare. And by the way, you can get it at anytime during your mac’s first year of standard coverage; you don’t have to get it at the same time.

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Windows 7 x64 on a MacBook Pro – Guide

11 01 2009

As I expected, installing the 64 bit version Windows 7 on my MacBook Pro wasn’t as easy as perhaps it should have been.Apple Logo

You can’t just burn the x64 image to a disk and expect it to work. My MBP didn’t boot from the disc presenting me with the same stuff as it did with Vista (choose option 1 or 2, but the keyboard doesn’t work!).

There are even some new issues introduced by Snow Leopard which I deal with at the end.

However, I’ve had further time to research better methods of getting around this issue since I wrote the Vista x64 article.

Note: I wrote this guide using my MacBook Pro which I got in Summer 2007. (Apple identifies it as “MacBookPro3,1″; It’s the Santa Rosa 2.4Ghz model). Some steps may not be required for your Mac. By deduction, I have already determined that some people are able to boot straight from the DVD. I wasn’t able to.

Ok, here we go:

Follow the instructions here to build a compatible iso file.

Burn that iso image to a DVD (I’ve tried with a USB flash drive but it wouldn’t boot :( )

Put it in your MacBook / MacBook Pro / iMac…. and install like normal! :)

Driver support in Windows 7 is okay for my MacBook Pro; certainly a lot better than it was with Vista x64, but you’ll still want to install some stuff especially if you’re on a laptop (to get the brightness adjustment, bluetooth, touchpad etc., working). So:

Put your Snow Leopard disk in, if you have one. And follow the instructions below if you see that message.

Otherwise:

If you don’t have Snow Leopard,  try your Leopard DVD and run the setup from there (Mine doesn’t have the 64 bit drivers on, yours may. Who knows….)

Or finally,  you can download the individual driver files from the above package which should save some time waiting for Rapid Share. They’re here. You won’t see any application run, maybe just a UAC prompt,  but they do work.

Now you should have a completeish install; but, be sure to check Windows Update (there’s a better video driver) and apply security updates / install antivirus….

Oh, and to get sound working you can just run the RealTekSetup.exe from any of the above packages in Vista compatibilty mode and it’ll work.

Whichever method you choose: you should update to the latest version (3.1 at time of edit) which can be downloaded here. You have to install a previous version before that though.

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EDIT: to improve your hard drive’s windows experience rating, look at the solution I posted in the comments below.

Snow Leopard edit: Now that Snow Leopard is out, all the disks have x64 drivers on them. So, if you can, use that. However, if you have an oldish Mac like mine, you may see the following message (Boot Camp x64 is unsupported on this computer model)

After installing the drivers from the disk, you should update to Boot Camp version 3.1 from here.

Boot Camp x64 unsupported on this model

If you do see that, it’s no big deal. Just open up command prompt as an administrator (in the start menu type cmd, right click on it and select Run as Administrator, click yes on the UAC prompt).

In the command prompt window, change to the DVD’s directory by running

cd /d D:

(assuming your Snow Leopard disk is in the D drive).

Now type

cd Boot Camp\Drivers\Apple

And then finally, type

BootCamp64.msi

This circumvents the installers check of your computer model and installs all the relevent drivers properly.


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Stop your MacBook / MacBook Pro from waking when you plug in the power adapter under Windows

15 09 2008

OK, so…. When you’re in Windows on your MacBook / MacBook Pro and your computer is asleep, if you plug in the power adapter, it wakes up; in lots of cases, this is annoying and it certainly doesn’t do that when you’re in Mac OS X.

Follow these steps and you’ll be able to stop it from doing so:

  1. Click start
  2. Right click on My Computer / Computer
  3. Click properties
  4. Click Device manager (in XP, you have to go to to the Hardware tab to see this option)
  5. Click the + next to Batteries
  6. Double click on “Microsoft AC Adapter”
  7. Click Power Management
  8. Untick the “Allow this device to wake the computer” box.

Note: I’ve only tried this on Vista; it should work the same on XP but the position of the AC adapter in device manager might be different. Comment if it is and I’ll try to help.

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Sound glitch in Boot Camp, x64

19 08 2008

I have known about this issue for a while and as of yet I haven’t found a good solution (though, admittedly, I am yet to look for one!) and the reason as to why I’m posting this now is that I know I’m not alone in having this problem — I got two hits from someone searching “no sound macbook pro vista ultimate 2008″

The problem occurs randomly, but I’m pretty sure that I see it more after my MacBook Pro has resumed from sleep in Vista (Ultimate 64 bit).

The problem is that no sound will play out of the speakers even though the system is unmuted and should be playing sounds!

The only way I have found to get around this is to insert some headphones/speakers into the headphone jack and then remove them. This always restores the sound for me….. But, I will get on to finding out if there is a better solution than this and I’ll update this post if I find anything.

Does this work for you? Or have you found some other way to restore sound? If you have found another way, please comment.


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Apple releases Boot Camp update – Version 2.1 (with 64 bit support)

25 04 2008

Annoyingly, having just gone through an annoying install of Vista x64 (click), Apple has just released an updated version of the Boot Camp drivers / software which:

“addresses issues and improves compatibility with Microsoft Windows XP and Microsoft Windows Vista running on a Mac computer using Boot Camp. It is highly recommended for all Boot Camp users. “

Click the appropriate link for the version of Windows you are running to download them:

XP

Vista 32 bit

Vista 64 bit

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Edit:

Have just installed this – - you shouldn’t expect anything useful like the ability to tap-click on the touchpad [can't someone mod an .inf file or something!?] or Wake on bloody LAN :(

In fact, I haven’t noticed anything different at all.

According to a comment at TUAW though, it does fix the wireless [Apple] keyboard problem with the caps lock[e] :P which would be good, if this installation hadn’t broken my bluetooth…. *sigh*

Edit 2: I’ve just found out that this is the same version that was taken from the Mac Pro DVD, they just decided to release it for everyone now…. (?) So, the fact that it did nothing for me is not surprising… and it is unlikely that it fixed the wireless keyboard thing (though I am yet to try).


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MacBook Pro and Vista 64 bit (x64) – A guide of sorts

13 04 2008

Just recently I went about ‘upgrading’ from Vista Ultimate 32 bit to Vista Ultimate 64 bit.

Since Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1) is now out , I figured I would save some time and use a slipstreamed DVD of Vista with SP1 already on it.

This was my first problem: Microsoft introduced EFI support in SP1 and this resulted in problems with my MBP not wanting to boot from the install DVD; All I got when trying to boot from the disc was a message telling me to select either option 1 or option 2 (with no explanation of what difference it would make) and, the keyboard wasn’t working in this mode so it didn’t matter, I wasn’t able to choose either and I couldn’t continue.

Having spent a while googling this problem, I came upon a solution: Follow the instructions here. here. Yes, it’s a fairly long process and requires you to download stuff (and be running Windows in the first place) But, it does work as long as you follow the instructions correctly.

The alternative to doing this is to install Vista without SP1 and (optionally) install SP1 later, but, I believe it will take up more hard drive space this way and having a working SP1 disc will save time in the future (I hope!).

So, having done that, it’s time to install Vista. Nothing else needs to be said about this – it’s an easy process.

So, once you’ve installed Vista, you’ll probably arrive at the desktop like I did and realize that very little has drivers (especially the all important network devices – Ethernet and wifi which could help with getting drivers!).

Inserting the Leopard DVD provided little help – the Boot Camp software did install, but not properly and there aren’t any 64 bit drivers on that disc.

The Snow Leopard disk on the other hand is pretty helpful unless your mac is as old as mine (you’ll get a message saying your computer is not supported). To get around that, follow the instructions at the bottom of this post. If you’ve got a Snow Leopard disk, use that and disregard the stuff until the ‘Snow Leopard Edit’ at the bottom.

You can now use a Snow Leopard disk and skip over the section below. You should update to Boot Camp 3.1 from here though.

I made finding network drivers first priority – since I can just plug in an Ethernet cable, I focused first on that – the required drivers can be found here. I downloaded them on another computer and transferred using a USB stick – I didn’t check to see whether the DVD drive was working at the time so don’t know if burning a CD is an option.

You can also download just the drivers (Bluetooth, iSight, Keyboard, touchpad & remote) from here though these are a bit outdated now.

If you want newer video drivers (the Apple one’s are old), I highly recommend getting them from www.nvidia.com

I now have a completely working MacBook Pro running Vista x64 :)

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Click for Windows 7 guide

Click for Macbook Windows 7 x64 guide

Snow Leopard edit: Now that Snow Leopard is out, all the disks have x64 drivers on them. So, if you can, use that. However, if you have an oldish Mac like mine, you may see the following message (Boot Camp x64 is unsupported on this computer model)

Boot Camp x64 unsupported on this model

If you do see that, it’s no big deal. Just open up command prompt as an administrator (in the start menu type cmd, right click on it and select Run as Administrator, click yes on the UAC prompt).

In the command prompt window, change to the DVD’s directory by running

cd /d D:

(assuming your Snow Leopard disk is in the D drive).

Now type

cd Boot Camp\Drivers\Apple

And then finally, type

BootCamp64.msi

This circumvents the installers check of your computer model and installs all the relevent drivers properly.


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