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Pastimes : Dream Machine ( Build your own PC ) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Michelino who wrote (1935)	8/13/1998 8:29:00 PM
From: Spots	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 14778

Michelino, in response to: I agree with your reasoning and approach when it comes to most consumer appliances and automobiles. But for a home business computer, a 90 day warranty is much too short. Monitors, floppies, hard drives, CD-Rom drives and printers do occasionally fail. Remember this: in most cases where a livelihood depends on a computer, the down time is the true expense, not the part replacement. Since this point has generated some discussion, I will quote below part of a private response I gave in another exchange, then comment, because some principles and ideas are getting mixed up. I have contributed my share to the mixup <g>. On service contracts in general: Either the contractor will make money at it on the average or will be out of business or unable to provide service when its needed. This is independent of the contract or its terms, by the way. Therefore, YOU (or anyone) will make money in the long run by giving these contracts a miss. It is IMPORTANT that you can stand the occasional loss for this to work. If you can, sure, in any particular instance you can lose money. But think again about what I said above: (1) The contractor makes money (on the average), or (2) The contractor doesn't have a viable business and in the long run can't fulfill contracts. These alternatives are inescapable. If you can't afford the loss, then you have to pay up for the insurance to avoid disaster. That's the key to it. If you can't afford the loss, whatever form "can't afford" might take, be it downtime or monitary or embarrassment or whatever, THEN you should definitely consider the contract. This is an individual decision which is completely outside the economic analysis of the service contract. However, I further comment: But ESPECIALLY for PCs, you have to add how likely you are to be able to collect. For fire, medical, etc, you can be pretty sure you can collect if you deal with a reputable company. For PCs, you have no such assurance. Of course you MAY have confidence in your contractor (Dell, Gateway). That's fine (give me other names <g>). But sadly our world is iffier than most. This does NOT mean you shouldn't get a service contract. It simply means that you should understand what you're buying when you get one. That decision has facets that don't boil down simply to "would you pay $100 to save a potential $2000?" or similar assessments. Bottom line is if you can "afford" the loss (and you alone decide what "afford" means), in the long run statistically you will be ahead if you don't buy the contract. BTW You'd also be ahead on the statistical average if you skipped the contract when you couldn't afford the loss. But in that case it would be sensible to pay the statistical cost because, even though you know you're likely to lose money in the long run, you can't afford an unlikely (but still perfectly possible) outcome. Such as fire insurance. I can afford to replace my PC but not my house. JD Rockefeller could probably afford to replace his house. Very much a personal decision. Regards, Spots

To: Michelino who wrote (1935)	8/13/1998 8:50:00 PM
From: Zeuspaul	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 14778

3 year extended warranty for $120<< Is this the warranty you believe is a good deal? Does DELL or Gateway provide an extended three year on site warranty for $120? The warranty in question is provided by National Warranty corporation #reply-5443868 . $120 sounds a bit low to me for a full 3 year onsite warranty. My guess is that this would not compare to the types of warranty that you can get from DELL or Gateway. It sounds too good to be true to me. Zeuspaul