I think apple lied to me...

I switched to mac last night, buying a 13" MBP the $1499 version (although I did get 8% discount from my girlfriend's corporate discount. I originally just wanted to get the base and upgrade the ram and harddrive myself to 7200rpm.

I called apple both the store and national number and was told by numerous specialists that with the new macbook pros with the integrated battery that replacing either the HDD or ram would void my warranty and that I HAD to have an apple certified tech do it to keep intact my warranty. This is what was the deciding factor in getting the 1499 version so I would have 4gb of ram and a larger HDD only at the sacrifice of the slower HDD (5400 vs 7200) but I figured I could live with it. Now looking on the net it seems i was lied to? I see tons of posts and even in my manual on how to swap ram/hdd.


Question now is should I go ahead anyways and buy from newegg an $80 320gb 7200rpm HDD and swap it out or is it not worth it?

I want my laptop to be as fast as possible as I will be using it as desktop replacement most of the time hooked up to external monitor. I have the 4gb of ram and the 2.5ghz processor now its just a question on the HDD to replace it or not myself... I dont want to risk damaging it either though.

Seems everyone has their 2 cents on heating/battery issues on the 5400vs7200 debate and most agree that the speed difference is more than marginal and worth it... ugh...

any ideas?


on another note... I love my mac experience so far

 

Apple continues to consider the new 13/15 MBP's hard drive and ram to be user accessible, and replacing either of these will NOT void the overall Apple warranty on the notebook.

What the reps were likely trying to explain, which may not have been clear for you, is that while Apple covers replacement etc on all *original* parts of the MB (incl the stock hdd and ram) if something happens during the warranty term, if you you replace either of those components then the manufacturer (i.e. Crucial, Seagate, etc) is responsible for the warranty for those parts; Apple will not offer any warranty service on the new HDD or RAM should problems with either arise -- and your system warranty will continue in force.

 

Well they were pretty clear to clarify if I had apple certified techs install 3rd party hardware such as ram/hdd that the rest of the notebook would be under warranty still but the actual 3rd party hardware would not. They said that if I were to install the 3rd party ram/hdd that it would void my entire apple warranty even if say the lcd went out. It was a good 30+ min conversation and apparently he was just misinformed thus passing that to me which decided on which macbook i would buy. Ugh.


EDIT The OEM apple harddrives are SATA I correct? Which with the latest firmware update if I were to upgrade to SATA II would i notice speed difference? (excluding the 5400 vs 7200 issue)

 

You will not notice a difference with any non SSD hard drive between sata 1 and 2. Sata 2 is only good for SSD's (in notebooks)

 

Thanks for clarifying that for me. So really it just comes down to if I have the 7200rpm speed bump in the hdd.

 

Excepts for in rare occurances, data coming straight from the cache on the HDD, which can exceed 250MB/s throughtput with close to no access time.

 

Good question. If you do decide to upgrade the HD and something goes wrong during or after installation then this is what's going to happen to your warranty. ( This will apply if you have the APP or the standard 1 year Hardware 90 day phone support )..

If you upgrade the Hard drive you WILL VOID the Hard Drive warranty. The general Hardware warranty excluding the Hard drive at the point will still be valid.. meaning that the logic board, original RAM, optical drive..ect will still be repairable/replaced if you upgraded the Hard Drive.

However, if something goes wrong with the Hard Drive during or after installation and you call in and you tell us that you replaced the Hard drive then we will ask you that we are going to have to put the original Hard drive back in if we suspect the issue to be Hard Ware/ Hard Drive related. However if the issue is suspected to be software we would usually troubleshoot the issue regardless if its an upgraded Hard Drive or not ( Pending on Agent )..

So generally speaking if a Hard Drive or General Hard Ware issue occurs and its not even the Hard Drive thats causing the issue we will ask you to put the other Hard Drive in so we can isolate...

 

after many phone calls I am going to exchange this model for the base model and upgrade the ram/hdd myself and they will waive the restocking fee. I dont need the extra cpu boost the 8400 should suffice plenty.

 

I would wait and see how you find the performance of the stock hdd. You may find that its fast enough and then perhaps in a year or so you might be able to afford an SSD which would give a much more noticeable increase in speed.
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Well ive always had a 7200rpm so im used to the quick snappiness and last night when setting up the macbook pro I had issues with some ofthe rainbow spinning when opening simple things. Would this be due to that hdd spin since it has to access from the hdd?

EDIT: however you do bring up a valid point. In about a year or so when SSD are more affordable and just do that then I wont have to worry as much about crashing/losing data due to HDD errors plus lot faster hmmm.... thanks for complicating things -.-

 

Most hdd have 3-5 year warranties,so it won't be a problem anyway...

 

Still a hassle if a harddrive crash, losing data even if backed up having to restore it, send in the old one, wait for new one etc. Better to avoid it altogether

 

not that bad apple.If you backup with Time Machine and you new HDD dies,you just plug old(stock) one(10 min),restore(~1.5 hours,depending on stored data amount) and keep going until you get new one,and and exact same procedure with new one

 

Since the manual actually shows you how to replace the hard drive, no, replacing the hard drive doesn't voice your warranty. Or the RAM for that fact.

 

A majority of Hard Drive manufactures offer their own warranties in regards to the Hard Drives they build. However Apple's warranty for the HD that came with the computer is only for a year unfortunately, and 3 years if the APP is purchased.