Dell 1705 Warranty

Hi all,

I have a Dell Inspiron e1705 with the following specs:

Dual Core 1.86
2GB RAM
120GB HD
WUXGA
ATI x1400

The warranty is getting ready to end in a few days so I called Dell to see how much it would be to extend it. They gave me a quote of $169 for one year or $255 for two years (complete care would be additional). Do you guys think that the warranty will be worth it at that price?

 

The answer is simple, but it's in the form of a few questions

Could you afford to buy a new notebook if this one broke down during the next year or two years?

When are you looking to buy a new notebook?

If you can't afford to buy a new one if it breaks down then it is absolutely worth it. If you are looking to buy a new notebook in a years time, then obviously just buy the on year extended warranty.

Whilst it may seem a little expensive considering the age of the machine - you could probably buy a second hand notebook for not much more; but then you still have the risk of the second hand notebook breaking down without a warranty.

 

How much trouble has it given you so far?

 

I think it is safe to say that I could afford a replacement laptop if this one broke. An equivalent model to mine goes for about $350 on eBay currently.

I am probably not going to be looking for a new laptop in the foreseeable future since the one in question belongs to my parents and it's really only used for internet surfing.

The only thing that is really stopping me from jumping on the warranty right now is when I think of it like this:

Let's consider probably the worst case scenario; the motherboard goes bad. If that happens, I could part out the rest of the unit including the LCD, processor, hard drive, RAM, video card. etc. I have no idea how much I could get for this on eBay (in fact, I could probably sell the entire unit as non-working on eBay). But I think estimating $150 is not too high. As I said earlier, if an equivalent model on eBay goes for $350, then I am really only out $200, which is less than the price of the two year warranty.

I had the motherboard replaced several months ago because the laptop would take about 4-5 minutes to come out of sleep mode. But it has been fine besides that.

 

More to the point, one thing that I love about the e1705 is how easy it is to work on yourself. I had one, and once I was out of warranty I used the service manuals to open it up myself and swap out things as needed. that being said, A motherboard issue might be the most difficult thing to fix, but I'm sure (nay, I'm positive) that given the parts you could make the fix yourself. These things are absolute troopers.