Shopping: 60W L-style MagSafe Power Adapter

[drewprops]

I left my lappy's power cable at the office today and am naturally looking into cost of getting an extra power adapter. Are there any shopping tricks to getting one for a discount? I'm not a cheapskate, just curious!


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[Dorian Gray]

My girlfriend uses her MagSafe cable to haul in her MacBook Air like a fly fisherman would reel in a trout. The cable somehow survived three years and three months of this abuse, but finally gave up last week. She took it into the Apple Store and asked if they could please replace it under AppleCare, even though her AppleCare had expired 77 days ago. Her only line of argument was that she’d never used AppleCare before it expired, so surely they could help her out.

My point is this: she managed to talk them into giving her a 25 % discount on a new power supply.

However, I suppose that would require you to have or pretend you have a broken power supply.

I wouldn’t use a third-party power supply. They’re likely to be inferior.

[drewprops]

Apple actually replaced my cable once already (I was still under AppleCare) and the Genius showed me how to wind the cable with a "service loop" to reduce strain on the smaller to-machine cable.

This time around the idea is to have two cables, one that's always at home.

But $80 isn't so cheap to me these days.

ALSO I haven't seen any 3rd party power cords that copy MagSafe. Patents and such, I suppose.


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[alcimedes]

They range from $75 for official Apple ones to $20 for knock offs.

Your milage may vary.

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=60w%20magsafe

I've had pretty lukewarm results with the offbrand versions. About a 30% failure rate in a year of use. (granted they cost less than a third of the price, but all that shit ends up in a landfill eventually, so it's not really 'cheaper' to my brain.)

[Brad]

My wife's magsafe adapter suffered from (apparently not uncommon) fraying of the insulation on the end that connects to the computer. I took a gamble and bought a cheap third-party adapter from Newegg for $24 last year, and so far it's worked out perfectly.

Definitely YMMV, though. I had read that off-brand adapters are really hit or miss, and I may have just happened to win on the gamble.

[Ebby]

the Genius showed me how to wind the cable with a "service loop" to reduce strain on the smaller to-machine cable.

Interesting. Could you elaborate a tad on that?

I have a special procedure to wrap the cable and my GF calls call me crazy. I wonder if it is similar. I get a lot of "You don't have to do that. Apple designed it to go this way." *Flips out built-in tabs*

But I swear by my method and insist Apple has never implemented proper tension relief in their charger cables.

I hold the charger brick, cable pointing up, extend my index finger, wrap over that as a makeshift tension relief, then wind the cable around the brick perpendicular to the built-in tabs.

So far the charger looks great after about 6.5 years of use. *knock on wood*

[drewprops]

Ebby here's a link to a post I made (just for you) about the Service Loop (http://blog.drewprops.com/2014/03/the-service-loop/).



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