The $500 MacBook Challenge

I buy a lot of Mac books on eBay, but there are a lot of people who watch my videos and want to know how hard it is to find things and get a good deal on eBay, so today I have my roommate Elise, who has no experience. buying Mac books on eBay and as you can see, we've already done that, we'll see how hard it is to get a good deal on eBay. Today's video is sponsored by Total AV, a full-featured free and paid antivirus software package that protects. from viruses, spyware, ransomware and malware with its advanced features, stay tuned to the end of the video for more information, so the

challenge

of this video was that with 20 minutes and $500 each we had to go to eBay and find a MacBook used pro that was suitable for general use, so nothing too demanding like final cut or 4k video editing like that, but something that you can use day to day, so that's how it was, so what we're going to do is have 20 minutes to find something and you. you can buy it if you want, decide, okay, you can buy it, but then at the end of the 20 minutes, whatever you have on your likes watch list that is ready to use needs to be bought. to put the Buy It Now filter, that's a good one.

I also love that we don't go over how to tell if it's a scam or not, so yeah, that's true. OMG I literally bought this MacBook Pro I made a video about how bad this was yeah it's bad I see I really want to look it really has to be something hmm we should have put like a little barrier here because I see you doing nice expressionist cardboard in high school that we used to have as manila folders. yeah that's what we did we stopped making these sounds people keep hiding things and their listings are like here's a nice computer and then you click on it and it has these giant dents on the bottom that don't happen.

Sorry, I looked over there, but that doesn't end in four days, so nice try, but look at this, there's just a little damage on the side. Well, most eBay deals happen in the last ten minutes, literally, so I don't take stock much. in oxygen auctions and less land as an ending, then you say okay, maybe I can make a deal here, it's just intriguing because then this is the kind of thing with the only damage, you could easily go fix the delamination and I would. fix the problems on the outside that's true look at least you know everything about it because we went in with you he will try to commit suicide since I bought it do we want to tell the ladies and gentlemen let's be real?

We are mostly gentlemen, the story of your personal MacBook. Yes, I had issues where it would freeze and burn on my lap and stop working and shut down all the time no matter what I discovered was the tiny little connector cable between my trackpad and the rest of the computer, but before After Apple realized that problem, they replaced my fans, my heatsink, my display logic board, yeah, I think they bought me a new computer, yeah, and then you just had the battery on my back exactly, so essentially I have a new computer and I also need to put in the effort.

I feel like I'm not taking this seriously enough. I have an option that could be good, but I'm very picky when I buy things on eBay and a lot of times I'm like, okay, here's the video I want to make, so I want to try to find a good deal and then I end up putting off the video for a month because I just I'm not happy with everything on eBay. moment this is probably one of those times where I don't want to get a scam it's going to be so dumb if it's a scam then eBay has money back don't worry okay it's three minutes left and it says this seller has positive feedback so I'm learning how to use eBay at the time you were looking very smug right now and I don't like it.

I think I found the right one and everything will be fine and then it will just be that it isn't. and she is a hot girl. I have a feeling we're going to end up with pretty similar computers here. I am very indecisive when I find deals on eBay. I admit I can be very indecisive and that's a good way to start, so that was our 20 minutes shopping for these MacBook Pros. I'm pretty sure I got them in the right order. If we boxed each other's computers together, it would be really funny, but I'm pretty sure I did it right, so I think.

We're going to address it now that you have a hand injury, so I'm going to unpack both, but we'll try to do it at the same time. I can take it out, I can just cut it up and dice it, so while I'm at it. This, how much did you pay for yours out of our $500 budget? That's a good question, yeah the original price was like 460 or something and then I said great and then they said plus shipping of maybe $15. I said great, the toilet arrived. drum roll please, five hundred and five dollars because, well, not including taxes, such high charges, I think it's a little over half of the states charge sales tax, so we didn't include that in our final because It's going to change depending on the state and you may not have it, so we ended up spending a little over five hundred dollars, but the budget was five hundred including shipping, so before sales tax, how much was yours?

I remember I think it was like 465, mine was 502 points. Whose $500 exactly with free shipping, so I should really be unpacking, wow, it's a box, oh yeah, you have an Apple box and yeah, because I'm smart, oh, can I take it out? Yes, go ahead. Wow, someone's tax forms are shredded. in a package that, oh no, that's a mess, but look, I mean, it's a MacBook Pro box. Mine, as you can see, comes in a styrofoam cube, yeah, that was smarter than I thought. let it be what I paid for. Did yours come from a personal account?

The sale of an individual like this came from a reseller, which was interesting because I thought it was a pretty decent deal. Do you hide behind the box both for 13-inch MacBook Pros, which cost a total of $500 and that's probably the best option? For your money you get everything, wait, does it have the microphone? It's not Apple's microfiber cloth. I think I'm just one who's allowed, I'm not going to lie. I think I might have to admit defeat now because this is worth $500 on its own. Look, does it have the Apple stickers? Surely it has them.

I think we both did pretty well considering that while both are presumably fully functional, mine is supposed to assume yours isn't just full of leaves or shredded paper. I guess why? Let's go ahead and power them up okay now that they're all set up, they look pretty similar so why don't we go over the exact specs of what you chose? Let's go to the section about this Mac and both read Out of What We've Got, Go for It, Whoa, Whoa, Whoa, I didn't ask for this, the computer I bought is not what it said it was.

Oh Anna, from the company. 13-inch MacBook Pro Retina with late 2013 processor, 2.4 gigahertz Intel Core i5, eight gigabyte memory. other things, huh, until our graphics are Intel iris 1536, okay and then how much storage do you have to have a 256?, so that's at the end of 2013, it's like the second tier, above the base model, The base model had four gigabytes. of ram for that year, whatever the reason, now mine is a little interesting because what I ordered and I will show a photo of the listing was obviously the one from early 2015, the same one that has the core i5 with 8 gigabytes of RAM and the 500 gigabyte SSD. but that's not what I have and then that's not what I have what I have here is a fifth 13 inch model from early 2015 with the 3.1 gigahertz core i7, 16 gigabytes of RAM and yes, 500 SSD gigabytes, you can't win because of that because you didn't find the deal that came to you, I mean, it's okay not to check, that's how it actually happened.

I wonder if this is covered by Apple Care. I can't imagine there's no way I'm covered by Apple Care until March 30, 2012. I really kept up with everyone. No, I'm not making all this up. It's statistically ridiculous that these things happen to me. People always say: What's the secret? What is the secret? Come, look, Jionni. It's no secret, it just happens, okay, so why don't we check the battery cycles so that my battery Wow 138 cycles a hundred in one. That is amazing. I don't know who uses a computer, but apparently they didn't use one. Yeah, there's not even wear on the hand, yeah, I mean, looking at that keyboard, normally you'd expect to see somewhere, there's a little bit on the space bar.

I feel like they must have gotten a replacement or something, I don't know why the keys are visible. too new, they are really new and this is a six year old computer. Oh, actually, why don't we do one more thing? Why don't we check how old they are so we can see if yours has been replaced? Well, just so we know. that Elise's computer is from February 2014 when it was manufactured, based on the serial number, we don't know if any of this has been replaced, so to try to get to the bottom of that, we'll download a battery health indicator. enough they did it, they replaced it how to read it, in this battery indicator it shows, so we saw that my computer was manufactured in April 2016 and sure enough, the manufacturing date of the battery says March 24, 2016, which has meaning for the pieces.

The battery is usually produced here, it is assembled now that you found it, so your battery is actually newer than mine. They are all 9th ​​in 2016 which means they had the battery serviced which is probably why it is in such good condition and if I had to guess. I would say they probably also made the screen just because it looks so new now that they probably had the delamination issue functionally, you could probably tell the difference and you like it, why would anyone buy that? What would you be doing? with your computer you want those specs, well if I'm honest the core i7 doesn't make sense because you know there won't be enough difference with the core i5 on these models, the dual core models aren't a big deal.

I would say that RAM is useful because, like web browsing and other things that tend to consume a lot of RAM, by having more available, you can have a lot, you can run Google Chrome on this. I admit that idli has both. open both Safari and Chrome at the same time open yes, 16 gigs of RAM would help with that, that's one area where that would help, real quick, let's talk about why we chose the listings we did, so at least what made you think That this was a good deal, well the person who posted it had personal photos that they took themselves.

It was on a rug, so it was clear that whoever was selling it had taken it. There was also a lot of information in the description and he offered to answer more questions. which scammers usually don't cover their bases, they cover things up, so I thought that was really intriguing, that's a good line, I'm smart, that's a really good line, those are all really good things, personal photographs that don't always have to be high quality, true, it was a pretty bad yellow, but hey, yeah, it was true and then mine was actually the complete opposite. It didn't have any personal photos, it was just a stock image, but since it was a big reseller, they had a lot of other images.

They had positive feedback, they had a thorough description that was very professional, they tend to be pretty reliable mm-hmm, so even though you can't see exactly what you're going to get, you can see that it really wasn't bad. and they said they weren't good condition so you can usually trust that in fact most of the time when I bought from these listings they don't actually have a picture and they just describe it and say it might have some wear and tear. The scratches are usually better than they look, so overall I'd say it was a remarkably successful endeavor, yes, and that's a good thing because there was a part of me that hoped you'd finish.

I came across a very bad computer, aka a burning piece of garbage, a burning piece of garbage, but that didn't happen and I think that should inspire confidence, if you're looking for a deal, it can be done in twenty minutes, It's not a for a long time and we didn't do a lot of things like, we didn't make any offers, we didn't make any offers, this was just a small part of what was certainly not a great harvest, totally doable even if you are a newbie. and also completely lucky, yes, complete cut of blind luck, but regardless of that, these computers would be perfectly fine for browsing the web, doing all your schoolwork and things like that.

By the way, speaking of which Elise, did you know that today's video sponsor, Total AV, can help protect you online, sure not, did you know that too, did you know that phishing and spyware scams are now more prevalent than traditional viruses? No, they are, yes. Mac and PC all have pretty good antivirus protection against malware like that. but it doesn't take you to the end, those like fake phone support scams, things that use cookies to track you on the Internet, those who think that those guysThey're crazy, they're everywhere, these phishing sites secretly record your information online. activity that collect data and collect personal information such as usernames, passwords, private photos, browsing habits, run silently in the background without you knowing, often used to carry out identity theft and card fraud of credit.

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To them for sponsoring today's video and making this experiment possible and with that I would like to thank you for watching this video. Don't forget to like, comment and subscribe. Follow me on Twitter at luciani. Don't forget to join my subreddit. in the description below, if you have any used Max's you'd like me to take a look at, we have a great community there that will be happy to help you and Elyse can tell you first hand that it's not that hard, very doable. Yes, do you want me to put a link to your social networks?

Yeah, okay, Elise's social media is in the description below and with that I'll see you all in the next video, bye.