In this article you can find something that you should know about buying used MacBook.
One of my close friends wanted to buy a second hand Apple MacBook, so she asked me to follow her to choose the best one. But unfortunately we didn’t know so much about it, just to check the keyboard that works well, or Is the disk wiped? Does it have original box or not?
finally, we bout the acceptable MacBook and after a while we realized something goes wrong with it. Because there must be more important elements to check about the hardware and insight of the units. So I started to learn more about buying a second hand MacBook after that bad experience and listed some important elements to check them carefully. Here are some of them:
- Real age of the system:
You should pay much attention about the age that it is not actually the time that the seller bought it. You should be careful about what apple mention about it. As a matter of fact, MacBook are built in different generations, usually twice per year. If you and your friend buy two MacBook in a same year about in 10 months apart, both of you will experience two quite different systems.
So to discover the exact age of the MacBook,
- Open the lid of the MacBook,
- Press the Apple in top-left corner and click “About this Mac”,
- New window shows up which in newer machines show the Serial Number, in older machines you have to double-click on the version number.
Another easy way to check the age, is turning the machine up-side-down and see the serial number and write it down in a piece of paper, then visit apples Warranty Checker online. https://checkcoverage.apple.com. This site will show you the model and in parenthesis which revision the MacBook is. like “MacBook Pro (Retina, Mid 2012)”. Totally it will tell you whatever you should know to check about the MacBook.
- Need to proof of purchase:
It’s clear that when you have bought a MacBook as the same price of a new one you should check the receipt and where it is exactly. When you buy something online digital copy should be available.
- You should know everything about the battery:
The most important about this machine is the battery, you should know that no battery being alive forever. Specially laptop batteries don’t have a long time battery life, as a matter of fact you can change the battery by authorized Apple stores and pay around $200, but this is a reality and an extra money that you should be aware of it. The battery can take almost 1000 load cycle with worse performance, so you should check health and load cycles. To do this you can hold option-key down while clicking the Apple logo in top left corner and select System Information. In the new window choose “Power” and look for Cycle Count. In this issue, you can rely on a value less than 500. more than that in no time you will need constantly power cable.
- Check all keys to be functional
Open the lid and type wherever you can. For example, password box or press each key and make sure that they work perfectly. Make sure that the keys are clean because it’s too difficult and expensive to get out the dirt. Actually the keyboard is very important to be okay with it, because a bad keyboard will make you tired over the time and it’s important to know that replacing the keyboards are really expensive and it’s better to pass up on the buy.
- Run Apples built-in hardware test “AHT”
This the most important technical checking over the hardware testing application, but it’s easy to do and check. Keep it in your mind that you shouldn’t pay any attention what the seller tries to say about it. To start the checking software, you should follow these steps:
- Shut down your computer. Then, press the power button to turn it back on.
- Press and hold the D key before the gray startup screen appears.
- It takes a minute or so for AHT to start up and inspect your hardware configuration. When finished loading select language and then click the “Test”-button.
- Check the dead pixels:
As a matter of fact, it’s not so much important issue to check out. Because recognizing the dead pixels are not so much easy that it seems. You should know that a dead pixel is not always a black one on the screen, but I can help you that if you find around ten pixels avoid the computer and less than that its actually normal and it’s not a big deal to think about it.
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