I am helping a friend purchase a laptop. I am not sure whether to advise her to stick with the 1 year warantee or pay up to $350 extra for 3 years parts, labor & accidental damage.

With a desktop I would feel confident sticking with the standard waranty as any compontent that failed could easily and cheaply be replaced.

I have no idea how fragile laptop's are or how difficult/expensive it is to make repairs.

I know hard drives/memory are easily replaced, but if the LCD pannel breaks can you simply buy a compatible part and install it yourself?

I need advice, should I recommed a better laptop or better coverage.

If it a really expensive laptop like $2000+ I'd do it just for peace of mind. Laptops well under $1000 I wouldn't worry about. If those break after the warranty period they are usually so out of date it is more cost effective to just buy a new one, lol.

You could probably replace most of the parts in a laptop yourself now days. The problem you will face is with aquireing the parts. Things like the LCD, Motherboard, etc are usually only avaliale through the manufacturer and they usually won't give them to you even if you ask nicely. They will have you send the laptop in or send a guy out if you are within the warranty period. If you are outside it they will either say screw you or charge you crazy fees for being out of warranty.

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Go with the extended warranty. It almost never pays to replace a display. Notebook repairs tend to be costly, and that year goes by very quickly.


Eilidh

you can always get the smaller warranty and they upgrade BEFORE the current one expires. Dell offers such things for sure. I just saw it today on their site.

K8T Neo FIS2R
Athlon 64 bit 3400
2 X 256 Corsaire
Maxtor 40, 120
Western Digital Raptor 74 Gig
ATI AIW Radeon 9700 Pro
NEC LCD Monitor 1760NX
Antec Tru Power 550
Windows XP

My friend has $1500 for laptop, printer and carrying case. She probably won't be able to afford expensive repair or a replacement when this one dies.

She is probably getting an HP.

I guess I am leaning toward her getting 3 years accidental damage, but at that price range it is going to hurt.

Hmm HP huh.. Id lean more to Dell. Both places you still wont understance the TS agents but Dell does produce better quality and also has the opps policy (CompleteCare Accidental Damage) as long she does not live in Florida or New York and assuming living in the US. This way the LCD screen will be covered for this is normally the first thing to go on notebooks. If this is her first notebook I would recomend some kind of extension to the warranty so she can get the proper feel and care for the delicate product without getting boned.

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My advice is to get the extended warrenty. You never know what can happen. What if the screen gets broken? The cost alone to replace it is costly enough. I have a friend that this happened to and she didn't have textended warrenty. Now she has a worthless laptop on her hands. The $350.00 for the warrenty verses $900.00 to replace the screen would have made the differance for her. She could be using her laptop now.