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Laptop Extended Warranties
October 8, 2008

As discussed in earlier blogs I admitted to owning too many laptops. Today there are probably 5 active laptops around the house and 3 inactive ones (anyone need some old Wallstreets?). Over the years I have found that laptop repairs tend to be more prevalent then desktop or the "leave at home" computers. Therefore, I am a big fan over extended 3 year warranties.

In that earlier blog I mentioned that I bought a Macbook Pro from ebay and one of the criterion I use in my ebay laptop purchases is computers with extended warranties. To use a car analogy this laptop was owned by a little old lady from Pasadena who only used it to go back and forth to church.

After 2 trips to my current assignment which is a Big 10 school a strange red vertical line appeared on the screen. I brought it to the Genius Bar at my local Apple Store and they said it was the monitor. They had one in stock and replaced it immediately. In addition, they discovered another problem with the case and replaced that too. So I walked in at 3:15 PM on a Friday afternoon and was called at 7PM to pick it up. Obviously I was thrilled!

Now I am not saying that this is the kind of service you should expect. I sent one Wallstreet in for repair, and they could not figure out what was wrong with it for a month and they had to send me a new computer and the laptop was gone for 6 weeks.

But the point here is that the $300 for the extended warranties for laptops are good investments in my experience. Because every laptop I have owned needs at least one major repair during the 4 years of active life and the repair cost always exceeds the cost of the warranty.

Posted by Howie Fenton on October 8, 2008 | Comments (0)