Buying a used Macintosh

* If you're looking to shave a little cash off the price of a recent model, please look at the FAQ page, instead.

Okay, you don't want to buy a new Mac, you want one used. You think it'll be cheaper used than new, right? Well sort of; it depends on where you go. You'll have to do a little footwork to get a good price. It's an unfortunate fact that used Macs in stores are expensive, sometimes absurdly so! (This is good if you wish to sell your Mac!) While you can sometimes get good deals, for the most part I recommend that people avoid stores for used Macs if possible. My source for used machines has almost always been Yahoo! Auctions. Used machines found on auctions are in almost every single case, cheaper than those that one finds in the stores.

There are of course, certain pitfalls with auctions that one must be careful of. First, not so much of a pitfall, but you usually have to pay for shipping. That can add up if you're buying a large machine. Also you are dealing with someone you've met over the internet, and have no face to face contact with.

Many people are also afraid of auctions because of the slew of bad publicity that eBay has managed to acrue in recent years. In my dealings Yahoo! Auctions Japan has been very good, and while there are scams and scammers out there, it is still quite a safe place to do business. Most scams on Y! Auctions are rather easy to spot. A brand new MacPro with 30" cinema display and an 80gig iPod photo "thrown in" for the amazing low price of 300,000yen, people with 0 feedback selling brand new MacBookPro sets, sellers using photos stolen from Apple's website, etc, are obvious scams. If it sounds too good to be true it's probably because it is.

Here are a few tips I have for auctions:

Check the seller - how much feedback do they have? Are they new? If it's a new seller trying to auction a brand new PowerBook cheap, it's a scam. Similarly if the seller's history is 5 CDs then suddenly a new G5, be careful.

Check their feedback - How much negative feedback do they have? If someone has 15 or more, you should probably avoid them. Some people have 4 or 5, but in relation to how many auctions they've finished, it may not be that many. 1 bad feedback out of 700 completed auctions is not that bad acutally, when you think about it.

Read the auction description! - On more than one occasion I've run into a very cheap Mac and thought "Hey! That's a great deal!" only to find out that it's display is dead, it has no hard disk or memory, or it has some other problem. Read the description CAREFULLY and make sure you understand it.

Read their negative feedback - It can range from serious to nothing at all. I've seen everything from "The item was late" to "You $%&#$%& This is a scam! I'M CALLING THE POLICE!!"

Look at the pictures - Personally, I do not trust auctions that do not have pictures, or have pictures taken straight off of Apple's own website.

If you have a question, ask the seller - There's no harm in asking.

If auctions are really not your thing, you may still be able to get a deal from a shop. While stores will not try to rip you off, they may not be very knowledgable about certain machines, and their prices are not usually competetive (compared with other stores.) Do your homework before going because if you ask a question like "Which is faster, a 1Ghz G3 chip without the Velocity Engine, or a G4 550 with the Velocity Engine?" you might get an embarassed laugh, then stand around for 20 minutes while the sales assistant calls 10 different companies to try and find the answer. Do a little bit of reading and learn what processor speeds is, what a front side bus is, and how much memory you may need. You may not want to slog through technical details, but in the end it may just save you some money.