Apple Mac repair wanted in Tooting/Wandsworth/Clapham/Battersea

Hi Vapourtrail,

Not your area exactly (ok, or even remotely) but I had the nice folks at Mac Daddy nurse my ancient G3 Laptop back to life a few months ago, and very reasonable they were too. They’re in West Hampstead:

http://www.mac-daddy.co.uk/

Annem

PS I’m about to buy a new MacBook….noting your comment on how they croak right after the warrantly expires, I’m wondering if it’s worth shelling out for extra cover…?

Posted over 3 years ago by annem

You can quite cheaply buy a new i-pod battery from Maplin and fit it yourself. I did it recently, and although a little scary, it made me feel real nice.

PS – sounds as though your screen is fucked, which is pretty pricey to sort out. Try connecting someone’s monitor to it to check, and you’ll at least save yourself the cost of diagnosis.

Posted over 3 years ago by Juvey

Thanks for your responses guys!

Posted over 3 years ago by vapourtrail

Hi Vapourtrail

If you find some one who can repairs Macs good and cheep please will you tell me know, I have a Mac iBook 12inch with a dead hard drive which, may cost about £150 to £200 to get fix. ‘as I can not stop crying over it and keep on saying WAY WAY me god way me could you have not broke my old PC tap top’ . TX will

Posted over 3 years ago by william

I’ve had my mac repaired by these guys, who are based in Wandsworth, before :

Honeylight Computers

They were friendly and did a great job (compared to Apple who tend to fix one thing, break something else.) I don’t know how much they charge, though, as I had the repair done under warranty.

Posted over 3 years ago by Henry

William,

I suggest that you buy a new drive and then follow these instructions.

Alternatively, I’ll do it for not much cash; I’ve done quite a bit of this sort of stuff to Macs in my time…

Posted over 3 years ago by devilskitchen

Thanks Henry – It turned out that my graphics card, logic board and screen all fried at the same time. It’s gone to the big apple in the sky. New MacBookPro for me!

William – I couldn’t find anyone who gave me an ‘estimate’ below £2-300 for my laptop’s problems, but a dead hard drive might be cheaper. It turns out my laptop was totalled so it’s going to cost me a new one – ouch!

Try these people:

http://www.macfixcentre.com/

http://www.amsys.co.uk/Service/Service.html?gclid=CLDS7OPP24sCFQ8vlAodWG2yWQ

http://www.computhouse.com/computer_service_and_repair_london_SW17.html

Posted over 3 years ago by vapourtrail

I got my iBook harddrive replaced by Quest Technologies near Old St (not exactly Tooting but might be helpful for william). They charged about £40 an hour, so if it’s just a straightforward job it would probably be about that plus the cost of the drive.

Posted over 3 years ago by cutta

If you’re thinking of buying a new MacBook, in John Lewis they come with extra warranty.

Posted over 3 years ago by eviltwin

Thanks EvilTwin – that’s the route I went.

Posted over 3 years ago by vapourtrail

Touch wood, I’ve never had an Apple product break down on me. And I’ve had a few…

Posted over 3 years ago by devilskitchen

Me neither. I’ve got 3 Macs at home. No wait, 4.

Posted over 3 years ago by eviltwin

I have three at present (MacBook, Mac Pro, G4) and a 5th gen iPod. I sold my older two Macs (PM 7300 and G3) and my 2nd gen iPod when I moved down here.

It was a wrench to let them go. They were my friends, damn it, and had served me faithfully over the years.

Posted over 3 years ago by devilskitchen

Ha, I must have accrued some bad kama then : my first mac (a macbook) has been repaired 5 times in the first 8 months :( Much like my old Alfa Romeo, it’s great when it works …

Posted over 3 years ago by Henry

I was very suprised mine died as I’ve had nothing but good luck with mine. That said, my iPod battery seemed to quarter in capacity a few days after the warranty ran out…hmmm.

Posted over 3 years ago by vapourtrail

I’d second Henry’s Honeylight recommendation – they were very good and very quick. I’d also recommend the extended warranty, certainly if you’re buying a laptop. Applecare paid for itself several times over with my last iBook (which admittedly limped on for a good five years before suffering screen death which meant it had to be tethered to a monitor, thus rendering it pretty crap as a portable laptop) and while ideally I hope I won’t need it, I’ve taken it out on my new MacBook too.

Posted over 3 years ago by SeeSee

Aaaaaarrrgghhhh – you’re all asking for it.

Macs… tut. tut. tut. I have a G5 purely because the rest of the design industry considers what the box looks like on the outside is more important than the gubbins inside it.

I have run several design studios and the downtime due to Macs going kaput and having to get rare, expensive specialist help to repair them was ridiculous.

As a matter of course now use PCs to perform design tasks with great speed, efficiency and in format my clients can understand – and if they go wrong, there is a nation of quality engineers falling over themsleves to fix the problem.

Although I am a bit scared by Microshites Vista….. and I love my iPod….

Feel free to throw things at me.

Posted over 3 years ago by Provdes

‘Throws an apple at Provdes (edit), and gives my mac a big hug.

Posted over 3 years ago by vapourtrail

[Throws “the book” at Provdes]

I have a G5 purely because the rest of the design industry considers what the box looks like on the outside is more important than the gubbins inside it.

[DK’s head explodes]

Yup, that’s right; the OS has absolutely nothing to do with it whatsoever. As someone who has worked as the artwork monkey in a printhouse, I spit on your PCs. ;-)

Actually, I loathe most “taught” designers too: have absolutely no conception of practicalities of print, most of them. Life has got easier owing to PDFs but… oh god! the problems that we used to have with PC files…

I have run several design studios and the downtime due to Macs going kaput and having to get rare, expensive specialist help to repair them was ridiculous.

The other option, which I took, means understanding how they work and what might have gone wrong and then fixing them yourself. Actually, I used to make nice beer money on the side helping out my friends too.

The trouble is that many people simply don’t understand how to look after their computers and then get surpised when the lack of regular maintenance brings them down. In ten years of using Macs professionally, my total downtime has probably been no more than 5 or 6 days.

... and in format my clients can understand…

You mean, those cross-platform formats like PDF, TIFF, JPEG, GIF, PNG, HTML, CSS, Flash, etc.? Yeah, I do that on my Mac as well.

Posted over 3 years ago by devilskitchen

Honeylight can be expensive. There’s a Mac place called Olympia on Durnsford Road – SW18? 19? – that have always repaired stuff quickly and cheaply for me. Brusque, but efficient. And always have a good stock of cheap second hand Macs, too. Lifesavers.

Posted over 3 years ago by rhodri