Refurb iMacs from $1,249, MacBooks from $849

Wondering if anyone has any experience with refurb Macs and Apple's policy regarding dead pixels. Just took my 24" reburn iMac out of the box. I've got a red dead pixel almost center screen (hard to ignore) and a cluster of 3 or 4 dead black pixels in the lower left corner with another single dead one next to the cluster.

I've purchased Apple Care - what's my chances of having Apple do something about this?

You are covered under the 1st year warranty. I bought a refurbed MacBook Pro and the Motherboard went bad in the first week. They replaced it no questions asked.

I purchase refurbs from Apple a lot. A few years ago I purchased a PB G4 and it came with about 5 bad pixles. I had also purchased Apple Care. I called support and they told me that a certain amount of bad pixels are allowed. The amount of bad pixels I reported and the size of the screen, 15", was acceptable. Overall, I have not had any trouble with the Macs I have purchased on their site. I am currently looking at another purchase soon from there. I wish you luck.

There are no benefits to buying new as opposed to refurbished, other than the nice white box and stylish packaging. These are same machines, same warranty, same accessories and software, at 15% off.

Apple treats them exactly the same way as new ones when it comes to warranty repair. In fact, they often tend to bend over backwards for the customer. I bought MacBook Core Duo (previous generation); Airport was intermittently working. They diagnosed it at Apple Genius bar; since I needed the machine, they tell me to order a replacement and send the old one in for a refund. However, they didn't have refurbished Core Duo machines anymore. After a two-minute wait on the phone, the customer care person told me to go ahead and order Core 2 Duo ($200 more), and he'll knock off those $200!

Now I have Core2Duo, with 120GB HD and SuperDrive for $900!!

Apple does these things all the time. No wonder they have such loyal customer base...

Last June I purchased a refreshed MacBook (late 2006, with SuperDrive) for a bit over $1000, including AppleCare, at the local Apple Store. A couple of months later, the motherboard went bad. I took it back to the store, and I picked it up repaired 2 days later. No other problems with it. I'm looking to purchase a refreshed iMac now to replace my aging iMac G4 800.