Warranty on Laptops?

[matéo]

I'm in the process of purchasing a laptop and I was wondering what the majority of people think about purchasing a warranty with it. Futureshop for instance will charge 300 dollars approx for a 3 year warranty on a 1300 dollar toshiba or HP. This is obviously the big pay out towards the salesman but with what these guys tell me it could be alot of money to replace parts in my laptop and the probability of something happening within 3 years is very likely. The warranty from futureshop covers everythign head to toe and they have there own service organization to back them up.

any ideas? 300 dollars is alot of money. Will it make a huge difference if I purchased an HP as opposed to a toshiba? help.

[diva]

i got a three year apple care warranty for my ibook
paid about $350 for it
a good investment if you ask me

[deliverance]

Originally Posted by matéo

I'm in the process of purchasing a laptop and I was wondering what the majority of people think about purchasing a warranty with it. Futureshop for instance will charge 300 dollars approx for a 3 year warranty on a 1300 dollar toshiba or HP. This is obviously the big pay out towards the salesman but with what these guys tell me it could be alot of money to replace parts in my laptop and the probability of something happening within 3 years is very likely. The warranty from futureshop covers everythign head to toe and they have there own service organization to back them up.

any ideas? 300 dollars is alot of money. Will it make a huge difference if I purchased an HP as opposed to a toshiba? help.

Toshibas have a better track record IMHO. A warranty purchase is all about peace of mind, and if you have the cash, worth it for sure. One thing to check between retailers is their turnaround time and if they offer any type of help in the downtime while you are waiting...as some people rely on their comps for work etc...

my 2 cents, good luck man!
J

[Silverwinged]

Originally Posted by deliverance

Toshibas have a better track record IMHO. A warranty purchase is all about peace of mind, and if you have the cash, worth it for sure. One thing to check between retailers is their turnaround time and if they offer any type of help in the downtime while you are waiting...as some people rely on their comps for work etc...

my 2 cents, good luck man!
J

listen to this man!
i got a toshiba for christmas and i couldn't be happier.
its a flawles machine, but you never know. sometimes shit happens.
i say eff HP, get the toshiba and the extended warranty.
you can't really put a price on peace of mind.

[dj_soo]

usually i'm pretty ambivilent about extended warranties, but with laptops - it's highly recommended...

I had a major issue with my powerbook when i got it and bestbuy replaced it immediately - laptops are one of those things that if anything goes wrong with the hardware it's incredibly expensive to fix and because you tend to carry it around, the likliness of something breaking is a lot higher

[beedub]

Dell has different warranty types you can buy at different costs depending on what you want. Future Shop warranties are kinda expensive.

Laptops are hard to repair compared to regular computers so it could be worthwhile. I have a Toshiba from FS, didn't pay for any extra warranty, but it's worked fine for 18 months. They most def try to sell that extended warranty - big profits and commish

[veN]

I got a compaq presario just over 2 yrs ago...with no additional waranty. I have had nothing go wrong with it. Be sure and understand exactly what the waranty covers and doesnt before you purchase. It might be worth it, but maybe it is.

[Dean]

if your paying that much make sure it covers the screen

some places offer warentee's that dont cover the screen... thoes are expensive if they get fucked up

[cinist]

cosco had a thing on where you could take it back up to one year later if you werent happy with it. i heard they were ending that jan 1 but i might have been told wrong.

toshibas are good but heavy and have shitty battery power

[Aki]

get one. seriously.
laptops are expensive to fix and if you break it you're screwed. i wouldn't even question not buying one.

[clevich]

Originally Posted by matéo

I'm in the process of purchasing a laptop and I was wondering what the majority of people think about purchasing a warranty with it. Futureshop for instance will charge 300 dollars approx for a 3 year warranty on a 1300 dollar toshiba or HP. This is obviously the big pay out towards the salesman but with what these guys tell me it could be alot of money to replace parts in my laptop and the probability of something happening within 3 years is very likely. The warranty from futureshop covers everythign head to toe and they have there own service organization to back them up.

any ideas? 300 dollars is alot of money. Will it make a huge difference if I purchased an HP as opposed to a toshiba? help.

sounds like he's trying to sell you a shitty laptop!

on a more constructive note.... go toshiba. Had mine for a good 2 years... I use it like a desktop and use it everywhere. awesome shape, wouldn't go any other brand.

[clevich]

Originally Posted by cinist

cosco had a thing on where you could take it back up to one year later if you werent happy with it. i heard they were ending that jan 1 but i might have been told wrong.

toshibas are good but heavy and have shitty battery power

ya, my brother bought a ipod nano from costco, said it's a lifetime warrenty if something happens with it and a one year warrenty if you're disatisfied with the product.

[Gusto]

take into account what you're going to be doing with it. are you going to be carrying it around with you a lot, or just once in a while? also take into account how you treat your things, have you had problems in the past? i've had computers for 8+ years and never had a part fail.

[rustybob]

On a $1300 laptop, you can go either way I think. $1300 is in that middle ground in between the really "disposible" $800 laptops and the really expensive $2000+ notebooks. If you've got the money, go for it.

$300 is pretty steep though. At the shop I work at, we offer extended warranties that are, for the most part, better than Future Shop, and our most expensive two-year extended warranty (for a total of three) is about $230 on $3000+ notebooks. I have purchased a Future Shop extended warranty before, though, and they did happen to replace my defective PDA on the spot, since they had one there in the store.

For reliability, in my personal experience, for laptops I've purchased, or the many laptops I've sold to customers, the top three brands I've seen have been Acer (suprisingly, as they price their products quite agressively), Fujitsu (awesome notebooks), and LG. Everyone else seems to be about average, and I can't think of any one company that has truly been "poor". The worst I've had to deal with in terms of support has definitely been Toshiba.

[stimulant j]

matt .. buy a TOshiba .. i been powering my serato off it w/ 40 gigs of musik... no problems so far.

[Revolver]

Originally Posted by b0ld

Ok...

Since I deal with laptops and laptop warranties I am going to let you into something here... The only main different between vendors such as
dell, toshiba, gateway, hp, etc is primarily there warranty and small little add on's.... The rest of the laptop is all the same god damn thing. There are a number of key players in asia that manufacture laptops. Examples...Acer, NEC, ASUS, LG, ECS.... They build the laptops for vendor such as dell,hp,toshiba,gateway, etc all those vendors do is slap a logo on it add there stupid shit in it and then sell it to you. The fact of the matter is that you can pick-up purebread acer,nec,asus,lg, ecs notebooks for at least half of the price then if you are buy through the "vendors". I've seen the same notebook that went for 750.00 CND sell for 1600.00 CND under another name.... same notebook... In any event expect having a bitch of a time servicing a notebook. The technicians at a service center will know exactly how something gets damaged and they can end up wanting to charge you an arm and a leg.

wow! i never knew that...thats pretty fascinating.

well...ive been a electronics/aplliance salesman for years now. there are 4 things that i would WITHOUT QUESTION purchase additional servicing for..

HDtv's (weather it be plasma,lcd,dlp,crt)
fridges
washing machiens
...........................and laptop computers!

trust me thuough....grind the salesguy for a better price on the wrnty. try for at least 20% off

[Technix]

Originally Posted by matéo

I'm in the process of purchasing a laptop and I was wondering what the majority of people think about purchasing a warranty with it. Futureshop for instance will charge 300 dollars approx for a 3 year warranty on a 1300 dollar toshiba or HP. This is obviously the big pay out towards the salesman but with what these guys tell me it could be alot of money to replace parts in my laptop and the probability of something happening within 3 years is very likely. The warranty from futureshop covers everythign head to toe and they have there own service organization to back them up.

any ideas? 300 dollars is alot of money. Will it make a huge difference if I purchased an HP as opposed to a toshiba? help.

Most laptops come with a 1 year warranty. The thing that FutureShop and Best Buy will try to sell you is a "Product Service Plan". Essentially, if you don't plan to upgrade your laptop or change its components around (and providing you hope to keep the laptop for that long) it's probably worth the investment. Sure, it is a lot of money to put out, but let's say for some reason your laptop stops working or has a malfunction after 2 1/2 years...the manufacturer warranty will have run out and you'll probably wish you had the service plan to repair the issue (without it, all costs would be your responsibility). It's like insurance...chances are nothing will ever happen to the unit, but in the event you get stuck with a lemon then you have the protection there.

My kodak digital camera had to go in 3 times for malfunctions and they ended up giving me a store credit for what I paid for the camera 2 years ago. Of course, the $500 I paid for a 4megapixel camera could now get me a solid 6megapixel or 7megapixel with twice as many features.

In my opinion, if you hope to keep an item for a long period of time it's always best to get an extended warranty. Even if you don't keep it for the length of the warranty, the item will appeal to a potential buyer if you try to sell the laptop with a transferable remaining warranty from FutureShop. That's just my take on it, though. :)

[timmy!]

you need to find someone who works for future shop. we get 40% off warranties :)

[DJDeeb]

Toshibas are the worst laptop out there. I can garrentee that you will have something wrong with your laptop after 1 year. Toshiba only have 1 year warrentees. Getting an extended one from future shop is the biggest joke. Don't waste your time and money.

Get a Dell Lattitude w/ 4 year complete care ( or 3 year ).

[bebu*funfun]

not all laptops have garentees on them.. even my 15" pb has been gimping out BIG TIME lately.. im on my 4th repair right now. extremly disappointed, but i still love macs, its just how lucky you with the laptop and how u treat it... i thought i treated mine like an angel..grr. ya.. apple care is on sale right now, so purchaseit quick if u have an apple laptop

[dj_precise]

DO NOT GET A TOSHIBA!!!! We have 3 of them in the store at the moment and every single one of them has something wrong with it. We use the laptops every single day of the week and for periods of about 8-10 hours at a time.

We had one that fried its internal power system 3 months ago for no apparant reason. Got that warranty repaired within a week but as soon as we got it back no longer than 3 days later something else fucked up with it. Turned out the motherboard got fucked, power system and the hard drive also went. It took over a month to fix and get back to us which is complete bullshit seeing as we need this computer for our day to day retail use. BTW, this laptop is only 6 months old. And even though every internal part pretty much crapped out on this laptop, they still had to replace it with parts (even the outside casing) instead of replacing it with a new laptop which they said was Toshibas policy. Apparantly there is a known problem with this model and the shop said that it is very likely that it could happen again and again b/c they are using the same parts to fix the old faulty parts. They said they will just have to keep refixing the laptop untill the warranty runs out and then we have to take care of it, meaning WERE FUCKED. What a freakin nightmare!

They other laptops we have in the shop do all sorts of weird shit too... I dont even want to get into it but we all have vowed to never buy a Toshiba again!!!

And Mateo, no matter which laptop you do buy, make sure you get the warranty!! Especially if you are getting a laptop that cheap dude. The cheaper it is, the cheaper parts they are using in it.

[esoter1c]

I've had a Toshiba for 2 years, no problems.

Had my IBM T41 for a year now no problems.

Warrantys never a bad idea.:171: