Yesterday evening, my macbook power cord finally gave out, and my applecare warranty just expired 2 months ago. So I made yet another trip to bangkok to see how to remedy that.

One thing my friend said is correct: you just have to walk around the whole mall at least once to shop around. Deals are there, but you have to look for them.

There seems to only be 3 or 4 apple authorized sellers/repair facilities. One of them was closed for counting inventory (??) and the others were out of stock. Everyone else is selling copys; some will admit it, some will not. I guess people will make a dollar however they can, but jeez.

How do you know it's genuine?

- Does it have the apple ouside packaging exactly like it would if you bought it in an apple store?

- Are they listed on apple's website as being an authorized repair center or authorized reseller?

- Ask if you can repair at any apple store, or only their store.

- Does the person say "I'll be right back....I check with my friend to see if he has in stock...wait here....no no, no need to follow me, wait here."

I ended up getting the copy adapter (60 watt) from IT Family for 1600 baht (M floor). The genuine adapter I think was 3300 baht and it would have taken 3-5 business days to order new. Funny i was thinking of getting the copy, but one of the genuine resellers actually told me to go to the M floor for the copy adapter 1/2 price, unless you want to go outside the mall and find the iStudios that might have some originals in stock. There may have been 1 lady on the first floor (before M floor) in a real small Apple-looking reseller shop that had genuine parts that said 2500 baht for the 85 watt charger. But I didn't see it on display. I thought about it and decided to take my chances with the copy. I still think 1600 baht was kind of high for the copy. Oh well. It was either buy the charger, or throw out the macbook.

I also ended up buying a windows laptop Acer dual core for a backup just in case as I do not like to be in that "no working computer" situation again. 7000 baht very good deal for a used laptop with all those features. Surprised there aren't a whole ton of used laptops at that place (windows or mac). The majority of the vendors were selling new laptops.

Overall I was impressed at the amount of computer electronics available. Make sure you take your laptop there with you and test the accessory if possible right there to verify compatibility.

Go to Apple Store at Central World. They got anything u need.