If the laptop just sits on a desk and you NEVER have a drink next to it and know you won't ever stick a pencil/pen above the keyboard and forgetfully, close the lid and crack the screen, then don't get the warranty. But, laptops are portable and people take them lots a places other than sitting on the desk. Also, especially for College kids and younger, get the warranty. Maybe you'll never need it, but laptops can't get knocked off desks, fall off a precarious perch, lap, table, whatever, and a majority of people I would bet, have an open can of soda, cup of coffee, or other beverage sitting next to the laptop when working on it.

For most products, I never advocate the extended warranty, but with laptops I always recommend it.

I serviced computers of all sizes from 1983 to 2008, and other electronic business machines from 1962. For the most part if they get thru the first 90 days of life, they will be quite reliable.

I always buy AppleCare (the Apple extended warranty) - though I nearby any other extended warranties. That got a a brand new replacement computer after 2 1/2 years on the last iMac I bought.

I consider AppleCare part of the purchase price

Very true--even past 30 days, but my recommendation for laptops has more to do with the ease by which they can fall off a lap, get knocked off a desk/table, have a drink spill on them, have a lid closed with a pen or pencil still resting at the top of the keyboard or in the hinge area, etc. Laptops are just far more likely to suffer from accidental(or clumsy) physical damage.

I have had my share of Laptops for personal and business use and they travel all the time with me so get banged around a lot. I have had most problems with HP. The odd problem with IBM/Lenovo and no problems with 3 Sony Vaio computers. All 3 turned 4 years old this year so I bough 3 new ones for Christmas. I only take the extended warranty on items valued over $1500. I did buy it for my youngest daughters Macbook Pro because she treats them about the same as the Gorilla in the old Samsonite ads. Funily enough, she has not used the warranty yet..

College kids and under = Extended(spill proof) warranty always in my book.

My ophthalmologist told me that he is pretty accurate in telling who got glasses as a kid and who got them as an adult. Adults who had glasses as kids generally treat them badly...adults who got them as adults, generally treat glasses with far more care.

Having run a company that designed and manufactured computers, this is called "infant mortality", and it can be largely eliminated using a burn-in process. Once a solid state component is held at or above operating temperature for awhile and doesn't fail, chances are it will last awhile. But manufacturing has improved so much, I don't believe burn-in is used nearly as much these days, if at all.

True back in the early days of Apple, when they used the educational market to seed their products and grow market share. Now, this is no longer true. Macs are consumer oriented, and targeted at those who don't want to mess with all the stuff PC's make you mess with. Educators and most students tend to be on the geeky side, and able to handle PC owenership responsibilities. If you want it to "just work", and don't want to pretend you're an IT geek, you get a Mac, giving up some flexibility and some extra cash for that benefit. SIngle brand integration makes for a seemless product; you just don't have as many option and have to pay more. We have both in our home network, and I must say I have tired of the effort required to keep the PCs up-to-date, virus free, working with the printers and the router, and troubleshooting problems the kids and my wife run into. I now have an Apple router, which just works, and I'm about to retire the massive quad core PC I built, for serving media and doing video editing, in favor of a MacBook AIR. I'll keep my media in the cloud, thank you very much, and have access to pretty much everything, everywhere I go. That's where computing is heading, and Apple is (once again) leading the way.

By the way, I have an IBM ThinkPad I bought in 2001. It was my second ThinkPad. They are one of the more solid brands, as PCs go, although it has been repaired a couple times under warranty (mother board replaced, then the screen), and the audio no longer works. It sits on a shelf and I use my iPhone.

And one final anecdote. Before I had owned a PC (I was carrying one of the original ET Macs around on business trips back then) I remember being at Comdex and seeing all this hullabaloo about Multimedia PCs. That must be something special, I thought and so I stopped by a booth. Boy was I shocked when I learned that meant they (oh my gosh, can it be true?) actually had sound, something every Mac owner had enjoyed since, well, there was a Mac!

Bottom line: If you like to play around with the OS and DIP switches, get a PC. If you just want to use applications, get a Mac.

My sons (college students) have HPs (DM4-2033cl) and love them. They didn't want big screens as they are more difficult to deal with in classes and liked the idea of fingerprint recognition for security. Older son's survived spilled OJ on the keyboard.

For me, I pretty much buy whatever is cheapest just like I did when I was buying desk tops (I do check reviews to make sure it isn't a problem machine). Last time it was $400 for a Gateway. I buy a new one every 3 - 4 years (new one goes to wife and I get the hand-me-down so actually expect to get 6 - 8 years out of them). Have yet to buy an extended warranty on any of them. Had to replace a power jack on one ($75 for parts, labor and shipping) and had one die but it was over 4 years old.

We expect things like a computer dieing after only 4 years as being "par for the course" with consumer electronics, but there is no technical reason we should have to. The only technically valid reason to replace something that new is for higher performance, as we continue to follow Moore's Law. But we demand the cheapest electronics China can build for us, use it for awhile, then throw it on a toxic slag heap in a third world country, and just buy a new one. The Earth can only handle so much of that, and it is already saying "enough!".

I don't consider it "par for the course". This is the only computer I've had die on me going all the way back to my first PC (4Mhz XT w/ 2 - 360K floppy drives and no HD) and the only one we've ever replaced for a reason other than it being so outdated it no longer met our needs. We have one desktop still in service that is a decade old. The difference between the bleeding edge and the stuff near the bottom is often only a year or so. My needs are not great so I am able to deal with old technology longer than many people are willing to. And our city has a good electronics recycling program to minimize what ends up in landfill.

"Good on ya" CACycling. Great to see a responsible and rational consumer.

I've met very few people (which is not to say that many don't exist) that actually used their laptop and/software to anywhere near it's capacity. For me it's a matter of finding one that does the two or three things I do the most very well. Anything beyond that is just gravy. Now my youngest son would never be happy with my laptop. He does very different things with his than I do with mine. And I would never be happy with his. It is much bigger/heavier than I want to tote around. When I remember I made it through grad. school (thesis and all) on an Apple IIe, I get pulled back to reality.


Oh, yeah. Did I miss it? What did she get?

Asus 15.6" Notebook LED/500GB/4GB/Win7Home.

Thanks but mostly I'm just cheap.

Mostly that's true for me. Most of the stuff I do is just text and code, and even a Linux would be fine for that.

But I do have a few applications that are getting more important and don't want to be without those, so I've got the whole Lenovo bundle.

I'm one of those guys that often runs applications that push a computer to its limits: Multi-GB databases, large Excel workbooks, HD video editing. But what will bring a system to its knees is a MMORPG.

Is your use work related? I have to confess that I'm gald my job doesn't require the high intensity applications that some must use.

Not the video editing... but I'm running databases and Excel pretty much all the time at work.

Never a problem with all the Acer's we've had. I also believe Macs are way over-priced for what you get. Now if you were on network that was set up for Macs, that might be a different story or if you were doing a ton of video work...

15 years ago and I had to set up the computers for my department. At the time they were built for our use and I got a local company to build them to the spec we required. 100 gb hard disc---2 mgb of memory--And a video card that would handle the graphics programmes required. They were replaced about 8 years ago and I aquired a couple for "HOME" use for the staff. The last one of those has finally died a death. The owner has just bought a new computer and is complaining that none of his Games will run on W7.

I did point out to him that he is probably the only other person I know- besides me- that understands Dos 6.1 so it is about time he came into the 21st. Century and got some new games.

And My wife's Acer laptop is about to be replaced in the next year. It is 6 years old- still works fine but is just running a bit slow. Considering as how it was the cheapest we could buy at the time it has done very well but memory is the problem. W7 likes more than 1gb of memory and that is the max that it can take.

My computer needs are pretty low. I don't need the world's fastest graphics display or processor. I don't need the latest and greatest commercial software or games. I don't really even need a DVD drive. I do value light weight and battery life, though, so several years ago I bought an Acer Aspire One netbook and installed linux on it. Still working fine. The old desktop PC is sitting in the basement running my web and mail servers and providing network storage space.

Thanks Nightshade. I need to buy a mac, in addition to the 5 windows pcs I have and one windows/ubuntu computer. Money's tight, so this is appreciated.

I'm writing a book on Blender 3D and just finished the first draft. Now I need to be able to test all the keystrokes on a Mac, Linux and Windows.

And between when this post was first made at 3:19 and now, I bought a refurbished Mac Air

Macs are probably fine for retirees or those who don't travel for business with a laptop. I have a second hard drive in my work computer that I use as my personal computer. I boot from the second internal hard drive when traveling to access my own computer. This way I don't need to carry my business computer and a Mac. That second hard drive was also a whole lot cheaper than a Mac. My employer bought me a hard drive caddy to replace the optical drive. I used one of my 3 Windows 7 licenses for the OS installation. With 1 laptop I have 2 computers.

LOL, well my old desk top, (Pentium 3) finally bit the dust, so I just bought Dell laptop from my daughter, she seems to "NEED" a new computer every couple of years so I'll just keep buying her "old" ones for my uses!