Damaged mac book pro.

[failpuppy]

To day when I arrived home from school my sister informed me that she had dropped her mac book pro. She showed me the damage, the bottom left corner of the screen and base base was dented quite badly and the entire base was also bent causing the laptop not to sit flat.

We are now considering the best solution for repairs. I know that the warranty probably wouldn't cover this. But would it be best to send it to apple or the store we purchased it from?

Thank you for any input.

[Spanca]

It depends where you live and when you bought it. If you live near an Apple store, they're much easier to deal with for repairs from the experiences I've had, but if the nearest Apple store is a fair distance then you could use an Apple authorised repairer (there's a list on the Support section of the Apple website).

It'll cost you though. 99% chance that warranty won't cover this (unless you come up with some amazing story of how it did it all by itself) and Apple repairs don't come cheap.
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[failpuppy]

Ok the store we bought it from is an authorised repairer or we could take it to an apple store. If it costs too much she will just have to keep it like that.

Thanks for your help.
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[Jellyfish]

Which Macbook Pro did she damage? Based on my experience of the pre-unibody units. The keyboard + top case is about $400, mainboard = buy a new computer, screen = new computer.

[nodachi]

so your saying the casing is damaged? how about internals? like hard drives or main board? like what jellyfish says.. anything required removing screws is gonna cost you $$ and sometimes they charge by hours..
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[Till@]

Considering it has been dropped with enough force to actually bend the base and cause dents it may not even be worth fixing. From the sound of it there isn't any damage to the internals of the notebook so it is likely that the repairs would simply be putting it all in a new casing... then once it comes back it might break a few weeks down the track due to unseen damage caused by the fall.

As far as where to send it, I would suggest actually posting it to Apple Australia if that is an option (assuming you live in Australia). This would likely result in a quicker fix by people with better experience with Apple computers. I used to work in a computer shop that was an official Apple dealer and when this sort of thing came in we would either have to order in parts (thus costing you time) or send the computer to Apple ourselves. Not only that if we were conducting the repair it was often the first time that we were doing it, I imagine the folks at Apple Australia would have had this problem scores of times and thus be more experienced fixing it.
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Mrs Tweedy! The Chickens are revolting!

[Spanca]

^ Apple have only had their own repair operations here for the last 12 months (since the Sydney store opened). Before that, the only option was an authorised repair centre. So if you want the most experienced people, the authorised repairers are just as good as they've been operating for much longer.

That said, if going in to the Apple store itself is an option, do it as you'll get better service (not the repairs itself, just the customer service side of things). If not, I wouldn't go to the effort of sending it to Apple as you won't get any better treatment.
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[David]

If confident yourself, why not open it up and have a look and see if anything inside is damaged? Which model is it?

[NeoSanity]

I must say, if it's the newer unibody Macbook Pro I wouldn't even bother. Essentially you'd have to order a whole new machined body piece for the laptop and transfer all the internals across.

Even then, Apple have revised the hardware since the release of the unibody so those internals may not even fit in the new unibody case.

[hotmr2]

hmm does it even turned on ok? screen ok or not ..... does it flicker or cracked


maybe sell it on ebay for parts .. and get another lappy
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[hotmr2]

post a pic of hte damage so we know how bad it is
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[Jellyfish]

[failpuppy]

Wow I should really check back more often!
How do we tell if it is a uni body mac or not. Its one of the ones that still has the proper mouse buttons and you can remove the battery (I think you can on the newer mac books). It is still working fine and my sister hasn't got round to taking it in to find out how much it will cost.

Thanks for every ones input great community on this forum.

Edit: about the damage. It isn't all that bad, to be honest if it was mine I would just keep using it like it is. But the shop owner might just happen to have a dead mac book sitting around that he could transplant it to.

[Spanca]

The unibody are the current design where it has a black border around the glossy screen, a single trackpad that's a button (ie no distinct mouse button) and the bottom part of the laptop is all one piece of metal. The old design had a tiny edge of plastic all around the edge.

Unibody:


Old style/non-unibody:

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[failpuppy]

Ok, yep its the second one...
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