Which warranty to buy...

I will be placing my order for a zx5000 within the next few days, I am pretty sure I know what I want, except for the warranty. Which warranty would you recommend? I was originally going to go for standard 1 year limited warranty and then add to it after it expires. Which warranty do you HP laptop owners suggest?

 

yeah, I figured that they must make a ton of money off of the warranties. I plan on testing the limits of my notebook within the 30 day exchange period to ensure it will fit my needs. The limited warranty should be good enough.

Thanks for the advice Jack

 

Hi OrganDonor,
I would suggest you not buy any extra warranty, they are in general a ripoff to the consumer and a hugh profit margin for the manufacturer. Here's a previous post I made on the subject.
http://www.notebookreview.com/forums/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=2460&SearchTerms=warranty

Jack

The color of justice in america is green.
http://pbase.com/joneill

 

Well, I personally disagree with not buying the extended warranty. But I do agree that they make a huge profit on the sale of such warranties. They're primarily a safety blanket in the even that something does happen. I recently had to replace a systemboard for my brother's girlfriend. Her notebook, which she bought from me, had the extended warranty added to it, and boy was that a good thing. That systemboard for a 3 year old system would have cost a few hundred dollars for the part alone and then labour charges on top. It could have easily cost $5-600 for the repair. Since it was covered under the extended warranty, it was free.

If you can afford or want to cover any repair costs after the 1 year warranty, it's completely up to you. If you're not as careful as some people and are kinda accident prone, you may want to get the warranty. Let's say it's a month after your 1 year warranty expires, and your HDD dies, that'll cost you $450US (60GB 4200rpm) according to HP. Now let's look at a systemboard...$700 w/an ATI 9200 video card. All these prices are from the HP site and do not include labour charges.

For an extra couple hundred to avoid paying $700 US for a systemboard if I ever needed one, would surely pay for itself on the first repair.

Also, if you did decide to get the warranty, I think you have to buy it before the warranty expires. I think it was 11 months from date of purchase/delivery, otherwise your S.O.L..
I'd get the 3 year extended warrant to give you a total of 3 years coverage. If you're accident prone, you may want to get the Accidental Coverage as well, it'll cover liquid spills, cracked LCD's, etc...

-Vb-

 

Here is my reasoning....
I am buying my second laptop with my credit card and will pay it back over about one year maybe 16 months? I decided to pay Compaq/HP the 99$ for the accidental insurence for one year. the reason is I will be carrying my laptop a lot! I take it to school everyday and in my car I just have it with me a lot. Now my current one I've never damaged doing the same thing but if one day I drop it and crack the screen thats a 1000$ repair! So I can't afford to buy one pay for it on my credit card and also at the same time pay the 1000$ repair bill on my credit card. So after the first year and I'm out of warrenty I will be about done paying. Now I hope it dosen't but if I did happen to break something very expensive then I could get another and start paying from scratch. In general I hate paying for warrenties but in this case only for accidental coverage its very comforting for me to have it because of how much I will be moving this computer around. Its not to late for me return my warrenty though ;-) so if you can think of a reason why its bad in my situation I'll lisen. I just wanted to through out a view point of a situation it might be a good thing.

Compaq R3000T (CTO)
P4 Desktop 3.0GHz w/HT
1 X 512MB RAM
Radeon 9600 128MB
15.4 wide screen
WXGA (1280 X 800)
CD-RW,DVD+RW
60GB 5,400 RPM HD
Wireless b/g
Windows XP Home
12 Cell Battery

 

Hi Venombite,
Yes but look at it this way. not too many people are going to pay HP $450 to replace a 60GB 7200rpm drive when they can buy one for $210 and do it themselves, now that is what I call gouging. Also two years from now that $1800 notebook will only have a value of ~$700-$800, even less if prices continue to fall on notebooks/computers as they have the past 5 years. So paying $200 to 300 to warranty an item that will only be worth twice that is not a wise investment. I would just put the $300 in the bank and in two years when it's time to buy a new notebook, the prices of even better new models will probably be under $1,000 and that $300 you put in savings will accured interest and be worth over $304 I bet[ ]

Have a good weekend Venom
Jack

The color of justice in america is green.
http://pbase.com/joneill

 

I mean, since the issues were due to accidents limited warranty does not cover it anyway, so my accidental damage warranty will be purchased with laptop purchase, however I bought standard warranty, I would buy it towards the end of 1st year.

 

I spilt liquid(white sweet wine, which is sticky) on my former toshiba laptop and had to pay around $200 for repair(it happened within one year from purchase and I had not bought any extra warranty). Then, couple of months ago from now my roommate dropped it off the couch and she had to pay $450 for it.
(well, these are did not happen in regular situations though)
My netgear wi-fi card was broken after 1.5 years of usage, but they have 5 year liited warranty and replaced it for free.

So, who knows what may happen. If it is your primary and only computer source(like mine) the risk is higher I think because it you may be more likely to carry it around and use it often.

I carry my laptop often with me and it is my only computer. I will purchase warranty with my laptop purchase. And thinking of buying it towards the end of 1st year!

 

<blockquote id='quote'> quote:<hr height='1' noshade id='quote'>Originally posted by DaGreek

 

HP offers an Accidental Damage warranty that does cover "accidents", liquid spills, cracked LCD's, etc... so DaGreek getting this warranty will cover pretty much everything for the whole year.
It's true that you can get it covered under your insurance rather than getting an extended warranty. The problem I've seen with that, when I was a depot tech, was that it takes weeks of jumping back and forth with the insurance company to get anything done (in my experience). It would be a cheaper route, but a lengthier process. The Accidental Damage coverage cost only $100 I think, so that's a good cost for additional coverage.
Also, getting the additional warranty is for the peace of mind for the entire unit. You can get the HDD replaced aftermarket for cheaper, but what about the systemboard or LCD? Let's say the HDD goes, you buy one from a store for $200 and than the DVD goes, that's another $200+. So the warranty is for when multiple things break on the unit (I've seen this happen before), which is still cheaper than buying all the parts or another unit IMO.

Cheers,
-Vb-

 

yeah, I didn't know you could get a warrenty from your insurance company I might look into that next time, or maybe when my current warrenty runs out.

Compaq R3000T (CTO)
P4 Desktop 3.0GHz w/HT
1 X 512MB RAM
Radeon 9600 128MB
15.4 wide screen
WXGA (1280 X 800)
CD-RW,DVD+RW
60GB 5,400 RPM HD
Wireless b/g
Windows XP Home
12 Cell Battery