Warranty- Will it pay off?

[diggingforgold]

I know a lot of people say its best to get an extended warranty and accidental damage insurance on a laptop. Consumer reports says that its a good idea, for laptops at least, to get an extended warranty (from the manufacturor, not from the reseller). But how often do laptops fail? Extended warranties can end up being 1/4 to 1/2 the price of the system.

I'm wondering how many of you have actually had to use your warranty or accidental damage protection, or how many of you have wished you got it after having something go wrong.

I'm trying to decide if I should stick with the basic manufacturors 1 year warranty or go with an upgrade and fork out the dough to pay for something that isn't guaranteed to pay off in the end.

 

[Lancelot]

My hp M-P4 2.3Ghz laptop is starting to bluescreen more and more often. It's now well over a year old and I got a 2-year extented warranty pack with it (3 years total warranty) I've restored it to it's original state, checked the RAM with memtest and I cannot pinpoint as to why it's bluescreening so I'm gonna send it in for repair soon. Without the extended warranty I'm sure it would cost me a ton, now FedEx will pick it up and return it, and if it gets lost or isn't easily repairable I'll get a new laptop...

At work we are using 26 Centrino laptops since Oktober 2004. Two of them have experienced BSOD's all the time, one has broken down with failed power circuitry. You can't really do anything with them except for adding RAM or changing the Harddrive and battery. So yeah I would always get extended warranty...

 

[ukdan]

I have the standard manufacturers warranty on my laptop as my home insurance covers accidental damage+theft.

 

[Pyros]

Id say it depends on the laptop. If its something thats easy to get parts for and everything isnt intergrated into the mobo I would take the chance and not get the extended warranty. I would also research the lappy and see what people have to say about the failure rate and exact fails the most.

In the end its like every other insurance. You hate paying for it until you need it.Then your glad you have it.

 

[Mr.Guvernment]

i get the regualr 1 year warrenty - if it dies after that -chances are i have got my money out of it and time for new one..lol

 

[sunrunner20]

It all depends on how often you replace your laptop, Personally I would have warrantee untill the day it is replaced. In my case that is a total of 4 years, orignal 1 year+3 extra from Toshiba's "Select Serv 3-year warrantee"

 

[Capt Fiero]

Anyone catch the old episode of "The Screen Savers" tv show. (before it turned to crap)

They had a lady call in she had bought a P3 laptop new and got a major warrenty on it. LIke 3-4 years.

Well it died on her and she sent it in. She was complaining that they were going to send her a celeron notbook to replace it with. The problem was she did not realize that they were sending her a 2.4ghz brand new notbook with probaly 4x the HD space and performance of her old notebook.

Sometimes the warrenty does pay off.

 

[MLMIB]

I worked in BBY as a tech for over a year, get the warranty. at bby('n I guess other retails outlets) the warranty even covers dead pixels. can't go wrong imho, to much to go wrong in laptops, 'n theres no way of just "pulin the sound card" or such

 

[Avg]

A friend of mine didn't need the extra insurance, because it was failing before the one year period was over, so I guess it's worth it.

 

[BUBBLE]

I think when it comes to notebook computers it always better to have exteended warranty. Those are valuable items and ya travelling with it most of the time (hoping ya doing it ) so the chances may high for the accidents. So it'l always worty to have it. For the desktop parts are easily avaible and we know how to fix them quickly but for the laptops parts are not that much freely avaible even if avaible compatiblity is going to be a major problem. So go ahead and have the extended warranty.