Sunday, July 01, 2012

If you like to maintain White Elephant, buy Apple products!

If you like to maintain White Elephant, buy Apple products! A White Elephant is a beautiful product though albeit a costly affair.


Product is good, no doubt

I bought my beautiful Apple MacBook 13' in Nov 2009. It was almost like love at first sight, and did not mind shelling out a premium at that point. Love is blind, right? Snow Leopard was shining at that time. And I was/am pretty happy/proud owner of a Apple product in India. Quite a thing I think.

A year passed. There was another temptation from Apple: the first iPad became available in India in Jan 2010. Of course I bought it. Pretty impressed, and satisfied with the product.

Product maintenance is costly (as well)

So far so good. Come Jun 2012. My MacBook's battery started depleting noticeably quickly. I visited Authorized Apple Service Provider (AASP) in Thane, Kapurbavadi Junction. Battery replacement was suggested. The cost of the battery is about Rs 8000. That cost is probably okay though quite high I think. The icing on the cake was the service charge by the AASP. AASP charged me about Rs 2000 as service charges!

Battery plus service charge in all is about Rs 10000. The AASP service charge is cool 25% of the battery cost. That's about 20-25% of the original cost of MacBook itself! The total of Rs 10000 every, say 3 years, just for battery replacement! Compare it with a decent Windows box that's available in India at about Rs 30000, just thrice the cost of Apple's battery replacement. My Dell Inspiron battery seems to cost (including service charges) about Rs 5000.

Lessons

Frankly, I did not think of such recurring cost every three years when I bought MacBook. Just thought it might be useful for people who don't have such White Elephant yet, but are considering buying one. You don't have much choice once you are deep into it! AASP support is kind of a monopoly play. If you want a reliable service/maintenance, you are truly stuck with AASP anyway. There is no alternative per se. In Windows world, there seems to be a range of options when it comes to maintenance in India, right from manufacturer's support to off the shelf options in any hardware variety.

BTW, MS Office (Word, Excel) today are equal to, if not better than, their Apple iWorks counterparts. I have paid versions of both. I do use both of them, at least at intermediate level I think. I can imagine Apple iWorks having an upper hand in its beginning days. And, MS Office catching up later on. Today, MS Office works better for me.

Just wondering what is the experience with iPhone, or iPad maintenance in India. Guess I am worried too from maintenance point of view in my case. Android based products will catch up (or almost already there may be), and will work out better from India/above point of view I think.

So, hold your wallet, think, think twice before you decide to buy Apple products in India. A wait for few months, half year or so for a competitive (maintenance friendly) product will not prove bad in hindsight, may be. If you are not money conscious, then you will not worry about maintenance cost anyway!

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