Is applecare worth buying for a mac mini

about 5 years ago when I bought my ibook, the salesperson kept harping on me buying applecare. I kept declining. finally he dropped the price of the ibook down to offset the price of applecare. ac wound up costing me nothing.

Sales people often insist on the value of products such as Applecare because selling it adds value to their sale (and thus often boosts their commission). If one were cynical, it might be possible to conclude that now the mini has brought the sales value of a Mac down, there's a need to boost it back up again!

As you might guess, I am one of those who thinks that Applecare on a mini is far too expensive to be worthwhile. The whole idea of good insurance is that it costs sufficiently below the cost of replacement of the item that it makes economic sense to buy the policy. Applecare is an insurance policy, and it doesn't to my mind fit the ecomonic model - particularly when one considers that the point at which the vast majority of system failures occur is within the first few weeks of use (when the standard warranty will cover it), or only after several years (when Applecare will more than likely have run out).

However, you don't need to make a decision on Applecare at the time of purchase. Indeed, you can still buy it up until the last day of original warranty coverage, thus putting of the point of decision for 12 months.

I pretty much agree with what AndyO said. The mini doesn't cost that much to begin with, so AppleCare is perhaps not worth it, especially in a case such as yours, where you know someone who might be able to fix something like a hard drive failure for a relatively low cost.

That said, I bought AppleCare for my mini, but only because I purchased a 20-inch Cinema Display with it (displays purchased separately are not eligible for AppleCare, but when they are purchased with a computer system they can be covered under AC). Under this scenario, my system with the display is worth a lot more than the computer alone (indeed, the monitor cost more than the computer itself) and so for me, the peace of mind of having a three-year waranty, especially for the monitor, was worth the price of AppleCare.

Peter

In my opinion, none of these extended warranty schemes are ever worth it, especially not for relatively low-cost items where the warranty cost often ends up quite similar to the replacement cost.

At the very least wait it out until the end of the warranty.

The AppleCare extended warranty really isn't like those offered by stores that push their own "service plan." I haven't yet decided if I'm going to get AppleCare on the mini, for the same reasons AndyO mentioned, the mini is so inexpensive, it's probably not worth while. (Although, Apple did just replace the combo drive in mine under warranty.) However, I have gotten it for my other Macs in the past & will for my G5. The cost of one service can more than pay for the 2-years of additional AppleCare. In my case, I had a SuperDrive replaced 3 times & a hard drive on a G4 as well as the backlight on the 17" display I bought with the G4. Those services, plus the very few on a couple of other Macs, would have cost more than AppleCare for all of them.

I am so jelous! Us poor folk in Florida can't buy Applecare because the state won't let them sell it here.

See, things ARE different in Florida!

That sounds like a lot of equipment failure.

Not really, when you realize how many Macs I have, plus that many more I no longer have. That G4 & monitor are now almost 4 years old & doing well. Other than the internal hard drive that died 3 weeks before AppleCare ran out, the other things were those that I probably would have lived with for quite awhile, but since they were covered under warranty, it was worth getting them fixed.