ct77

I am purcashing a new hard drive for my G4 iMac (flat-panel / dome model).

I live in the K-W area and since First Avenue has closed, I've lost my usual Apple Service Provider.

Carbon has now set up shop in town (which I think is great) but when I peruse their web site, I see that they charge $85 an hour to install hard drives. That seems excessive to me -- the labour to install the hard drive could end up costing more than the drive itself!

So I dug a little deeper, and I see that the University of Waterloo is listed on apple.ca as a Service Provider. I called the Univ. of Waterloo, and spoke to a Zhang Kent, who does the service, and he informs me the charge is a flat $45 to install hard drives, which sounds more reasonable to me.

Which leads me to my actual questions for the ehMac community:

Any opinions, good or bad, about either the Univ. of Waterloo or about Zhang Kent in particular, as to their ability to provide good service for Apple hardware?

Just treading new water here, and I thought I'd see if anyone has some input.

Thanks in advance.

Heart

If U of W is an Apple Authorized Service Provider then the tech would have to his/her papers and has passed all the appropriate Apple Certification.
Here is a better link: U of W - CampusTechshop

First Avenue would have charged you $100 per hour.

Now is that your hard drive or theirs and:

A. Just install the HD,
B. Install HD and initialize
C. Install HD and Mac OS X
D. Install HD, Mac OS X and transfer data.

Other specifics would be:
Where is the Mac OS coming from, the original Restore disks, Panther or Tiger.

Sometimes this is what makes the difference between $45 - $85 or $100.
Make sure you are getting what you want.

I would say as long as your going to a Apple Authorized Service Provider (AASP) your are taking a safe route. May could do this job for you but few are actually 'Certified" and this could be a major factor if you still qualify for AppleCare.AppleCare .

ct77

I'll be providing the new hard drive, and the job is only to install the hardware, I'm OK with taking care of the data transfer -- I have an external Firewire hard drive at home and know how to use Carbon Copy Cloner.

You make a good point, I might follow up at Carbon Computing to see what they have to say -- it should certainly take less time to simply install the hardware, as opposed to doing parts B, C, and D that you outline above.

I don't see Univ. of Waterloo advertising that they are an authorized Apple Service Provider, which most places do when they qualify.

Thanks for the feedback!