Thread: computer warranty

Well, since my computer died for no good reason whatsoever and there's no cheap way to repair it, I thought I'd check whether I am expecting too much.

So, my mac mini just died, few months after the 1 year warranty expired. Fixing it is as expensive as buying a new one. I had refused to purchase the optional 2 more years of warranty for 150, since this is 1/4 of the cost of the computer itself. In fact I was pretty pissed off at Apple because the several times I've called them with a problem they didn't seem to care at all what I'm having issues with, but were quite pushy to sell me the extended warranty. In fact the last time the douchebag tried to tell me how great of a thing it is, my response was 'If Apple cannot make a computer that lasts more than a year I am just going to have to find a company that can'. Now I have the opportunity to live up to my cockyness.

I have built (or ordered to be built) computers from commodity parts by the tens and the hundreds and that has been quite successful, but specialized brand name computers (e.g. laptops, and the mini is really a laptop w/o the screen) are a whole other thing.

So, my questions are:
- do you expect your computers to last more than 1 year?
- do you purchase the extended warranty?
- is 1/4 of the computer cost acceptable amount for a 2 year warranty, beyond 1st year?

I had considered these questions when I was deciding on it and my answers were no, so I have taken the risk and I'm paying for it now. I am just curious what others do, as I may be misunderestimating that risk.

Gugi,

1. Yes, yes I do - both my desktop and laptop are over 3 years old atm;

2. No, no I don't (ever seen that Simpson's episode where Homer says "Extended Warranty!! How can I lose?");

3. Well, in your case it sounds like it would have been worth it in hindsight, but generally extended warranties over here are < 10% of the purchase price (though I've never bought a Mac - maybe 25% is normal for a mac ). But it does depend on who you buy the computer from.

Sounds like you had a very crappy experience - what are you thinking of purchasing next?

James.

ah, yeah, the computers we build last forever (I've got machines laying around that are about 10 years old - serve as a routers). I can make myself a nice linux box for very little money, but even with the very expensive ultra quiet fans we bought from germany they can't compare with the mac mini when the fan spins just on the rare ocasions of starup.

This is my second mini. Apple's implementation of BSD sucks in parallelization, so you've got to have more than one processor if you don't want the computer to freeze for few seconds every now and then.

So yeah, I am getting one more mini, in warranty, and I'll get another year to make up my mind on that warranty thing (you can buy the extended warranty anytime within the first year, so it makes sense to wait till the end).
Have you seen the macbook air - that's the computer I wanted and thought apple ought to make for the last 5 years. I want to like them and that's why I'm giving them one more chance.

Plus proprietary formats suck and I'm currently locked in HFS+. I'll have to find a mac I can borrow to access my data and transfer them to something else. Of course I always knew this.

And yeah I've always taken the extended warranty on my thinkpads, but that's 5-10%, which is the numbers I expect knowing the failure rates of hardware.

My sister's Apple just died after the warranty expired as well. I had a similar situation happen to me with a Laptop PC. I don't know a lot about computers but I guess that the image card went out, but it was connected to something really important like the motherboard or something. Basically it would have cost almost as much to fix the issue than to get a new computer, so I just got a cheaper desktop. No, we don't purchase extended warranties in this family either. Computers have been the only thing that this has been an issue with. It probably would not work with a computer because of a serial number issue, but my dad has been known to purchase a new product and return the old product that broke long before it should have instead.

David

Do I expect my computers to last more than a year?
Absolutely. The oldest I own runs Windows 98se, bought in '99 and still runs smooth (albeit a little slower than my newer ones).

Do I purchase the extended warranty?
Nope. Most minor things I can fix myself. The basic one year is good enough to make sure I didn't buy a lemon.

Is it worth a quarter of the overall price for an extended warranty?
I don't know on this one, since I don't normally purchase them.

The main thing I do is keep EVERYTHING that the computer comes with. I know with all Windows systems this includes backup disks that allow you, essentially, to reset your computer to the way it was when it was sent out of the factory. Mind you, hardware failures aren't always minor repairs and no disk can get you around it. I find Hewlett Packard and Toshiba to be trustworthy brands though, if you do decide to go that route. I try to avoid Dells if only from the problems I hear from friends.

I have a MacBookPro (purchased last March) and I originally did not purchase the AppleCare warranty (3 years from original purchase I believe) but after doing a firmware update which crashed the machine (98% sure I did something wrong....I'm new to Mac, having come over from the dark side after 13 years...), I went ahead and purchase the AppleCare when I purchased Leopard. I have not had any other issues with the laptop (touch wood). I was using a Dell laptop running all the latest XP tweaks when I was working (no job yet for those who remember the thread before the Crash....) and had the MacBook at home - no comparison...the Mac's performance and stability far exceeded the PC (I think a lot of that is do to the stability of Unix, which is what the Mac OSX is based on).

As for your Mini - 1 year's use and then nada is unacceptable...have you tried going to an Apple Store (is there one near you?). I would contact Apple (not the Customer Disservice twits), but try their Public Affairs folks...and raise holy hell. I have done that with other products and gotten responses, long after the warranty expired. I give them the "I understand about warranties, but I think 1 year's worth of functionality is unacceptable. I would hate to think that obsolescence is purposely being built into these machines...blah, blah, blah." As with a lot of customer service in the US, you have to make them do their jobs....it got so bad with my homebuilder and their balking at repairing poorly designed eaves/gables/drainage, I threatened to picket their new building sites, telling potential customer to come talk to me before considering one of their homes......they sent someone to fix the problems....it is still a shining example of what is wrong with home construction today in the US, but at least those problems have been addressed.

Have you called Applecare about it? I've sent through laptops before that were about a month out of warranty and gotten it taken care of. You might give it a try because Applecare is generally pretty cool about it

Originally Posted by gugi

So, my questions are:
- do you expect your computers to last more than 1 year?

I think the industry norm is that a PC (not necessarily a MAC) is supposed to be "out of date" after 3-years. Of course, that seems to be a number pushed by the guys that think we all need faster CPUs and more memory every other day. I contend that's absurd for 85% of PC users... ie, those that use their PC to access the internet, email, and a word processor. I guess if you're a gamer or heavily into graphics you might want to have the fastest gun in town... otherwise, most of us only need to buy a new one when the software won't run any more or it breaks.

I have 5 PCs in my home office right now... two are used every day and the others are test machines that get fired up as needed to test software changes. The oldest one is 12 years old, and that's the last one I bought assembled... since then I buy parts and build my own. The newest one I built last year. In that interval I've had 1 disk failure, a number of fans die, several monitors die, and every newer model Epson printer has croaked (I'll only buy Canon now).

When I worked in industry we found it made more sense to build our own PCs than buy Dells or Compaqs. We found the purchased ones failed more often than the ones we built and they never had the same components in any two of them (even though the model number was the same on the outside). Since we resold them embedded in turnkey systems, we needed the reliability to be high.

- do you purchase the extended warranty?

I never buy the extended warranty for anything. I've run service organizations, and I can tell you extended warranties are a big money maker. My suggestion... pretend to buy the warranty by putting the monthly fee you would pay them in a money market account somewhere... if/when you need to get something fixed/replaced you'll most likely have more than enough money to do that.

- is 1/4 of the computer cost acceptable amount for a 2 year warranty, beyond 1st year?

if you're asking, I think you already know the answer... it's not, but if you can't fix it yourself and the dealer is the only place you can take it, then you're kinda stuck. But I think even MACs are repaired by non-Apple people too, aren't they? I'd guess parts and availability might be more expensive, though.

Originally Posted by azjoe

I think the industry norm is that a PC (not necessarily a MAC) is supposed to be "out of date" after 3-years. Of course, that seems to be a number pushed by the guys that think we all need faster CPUs and more memory every other day. I contend that's absurd for 85% of PC users... ie, those that use their PC to access the internet, email, and a word processor. I guess if you're a gamer or heavily into graphics you might want to have the fastest gun in town... otherwise, most of us only need to buy a new one when the software won't run any more or it breaks.

Macs now possess identical components to their "PC" counterparts. Therefore they're kind of subject to the same "push".

Thanks for the responses guys, it looks like I'm not trying to be overly cheap, just Apple is too greedy, and I got unlucky.

The mac mini is really a laptop - all parts inside are laptop parts. I'm comfortable with replacing parts even in laptops, here there are 5 of them - board/disk/dvd/memory/cpu (the later 4 are really standard parts that PCs use as well. The sound/bluetooth/wifi are also modular, but probably not standard.

The broken part is the motherboard - it started all of a sudden by the USB ports and bluetooth disappearing, then the audio, all possible resets could bring back briefly the audio and bluetooth, but not the USB.
Now the computer can't see its hard drive, but it sees the DVD, although they are on the exact same slot and I can connect the harddrive to another computer via enclosure and verity it is fine.

This one lasted 1yr 4mo. I did not expect a hardware failure past the first year, esp. on a computer that sits still, but here it happened.

I mentioned that I decided to get another mac mini (I don't have to convert 1TB of data to some other filesystem) and it looks like I'll offer this one on ebay for parts to offset the cost a little bit. Perhaps some razors will be going on B/S/T as well.

WB, that's a good idea, I think I will actually do that and call Apple to bitch. I have to find some way to get up the ranks. Their last update to Tiger broke the usb webcam (and even apple doesn't make their firewire webcam anymore). After pestering them for 2 months they had the nerve to tell me that their engineers are too bussy with the new release of the operating system and don't have time to fix bugs they have introduced!!! So they broke my system and they are working on the fix that I have to buy not the one they are supposed to give me for free. I pointed this out and asked the comment to be send to corporate, which they said they will, but that's the last thing I hard from them.

sorry for ranting