Extended warranty necessary?

I'm considering buying a T410 for university. I take my laptop with me pretty much everywhere I go.

My last laptop (Dell Inspiron 1520) failed me miserably. LCD hinge broke from normal use. Stopped working after a few drops of juice got into the keyboard. Case cracked, power adapter pin broke off from motherboard after dropping from only 2 feet. Its warranty is now up, and I don't expect it to last long. I need a laptop that doesn't interrupt my workflow.

The Thinkpad T410 is my top pick right now, but good things don't come cheap. I'm wondering if the extended warranty is worth it and/or is it even necessary?

My budget limits me to about $1200 before tax. With all the coupon codes I can find right now. I've configured one at this spec for about $1124:

- i7-620M CPU
- 4GB RAM
- Win7 Pro 64bit
- Quadro NVS3100M
- 320 GB 7200 rpm HDD

My other option is to drop the i7-620 for a i5-540, which lets me add a 3 year basic warranty while still under budget. NVS3100M is not great for gaming, I'm thinking i7 is just overkill for the rest of the setup.

What do you guys think?

 

I thought most ThinkPads come with a 3-year warranty unless you buy from the Outlet. Do you want more than 3 years warranty?

 

Performance difference between the Core i7-620M and the Core i5-540M are negligible in certain benchmarks and real-world usage. You’re probably better off with the Core i5 option as being better value for money and invest in the warranty.

Not all ThinkPad’s come with 3 years warranty so do check this carefully. Going to university there’s probably be a lot of perils about so opting for 3 yr onsite warranty would be a wise choice. Accidental protection may be worth the extra for peace of mind so if you do drop it or spill liquids over then you’re still covered.

You just never know when it may come in handy, when I was in Uni I was cleaning some dishes at my dorm and had spilt some liquid from the wet dishes on my R50e that frizzled the keyboard. Not at all convenient, especially as I had an essay to write for a module coming up at that time!

 

Why not stick with integrated graphics? You save money, it runs cooler, and you save money. Also it's one less thing to go bust.

As for the processor, again, why not save some money and go with the i5.

You could put the savings from above towards an SSD, but you may want to wait a bit on that as intel's 3rd generation SDDs will be announced before the end of the year, Sept I think. The 3rd gen will come in 160GB, 300GB, and 600GB. Hopefully the prices of other SSDs will drop when these come out, like OCZs vertex line. An SSD would probably be a better upgrade than going from i5 to i7.

Warranty
It depends on the price of the extension. But keep in mind whatever you spend on warranty extension you could just spend towards buying a new notebook if something was to happen to yours. Also there is the matter of onsite service vs. mail it in for service, obviously onsite is better but it costs more.

Coupons:
Since your in canada check out the lenovo prices through visaperks.ca. But there are usually bigger savings by using Canada coupon codes through the Lenovo site. I don't think they let you use coupons and the visaperks discount together.

Redflagdeals.com is pretty good for posting Lenovo Canada coupons.
RedFlagDeals.com - Search results for lenovo
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Edit:
Again, regarding the warranty. When I bought my X40 in 2005 it cost $2000. It come with a 1yr warranty, Lenovo said I had a year from the time I ordered it to extend the warranty. So after about 10 months I paid another $200 and extended it another 2years. In retrospect I should of just kept the money. Now that you can get a T-series for under $1000, in my opinion there's no point in getting the extended waranty if it's going to cost more than %10 of the purchase price of the notebook. Just my 2cents though.

 

I saw a friend's T61 the other day, the thing is a brick!!! I trust the T410 can easily survive "minor accidents". For pure budget concerns, I'm going with the 3 year basic/return to depot warranty.

I'm do a bit of light gaming, I hope my replacement can at least out perform my dell which had a 8600M GT. 3Dmark06 scores seem identical between the two. I honestly did not expect a lightweight business machine to be this powerful, but when I saw the options I simply couldn't resist.

I'm definitely thinking about it, anyone know if Lenovo lets you use harddrives purchased from 3rd party vendors?

 

My T61 only came with a one year warranty, and I bought it brand new through the Lenovo website. Also, my X301 only has a one year warranty as well (please someone correct me if I'm wrong here). And I bought the X301 brand new via. Lenovo's website as well.

 

I plan to buy directly from the lenovo website ( Lenovo Canada) and yeah the base warranty here is also one year, basic.

Lenovo's idea of warranty extension over here is essentially additional $100/year for basic, while $150/year for onsite next business day

 

Yes you can put aftermarket hard drives in your Lenovo no problem. You may find them better value (in price and performance) than the listed option. My ThinkPad currently is not using any original hard drives at all, I just leave them on the side as spares.

The only downside is that anything "aftermarket" may affect Lenovo's stance on the warranty. This is not just for hard drives, aftermaket RAM or PCI cards are also affected. Hence why I use the original drive as spares so when you might need to do up a warranty call, you can just place the original drive back in and send it off together without losing much (data and time to backup).

I take this as a compliment!

 

In USA most of the Thinkpad warranty has standard one year, this reduces the purchasing cost of the laptop and make them seems cheaper to the consumer.

While, in many countries where the price of Thinkpads are higher, they tend to offer a better warranty protection, since Lenovo want to differentiate their Thinkpad from the general consumer grade laptops that have the standard one year laptop. Since a 200 or 300 dollars difference is not going to make a person whom was going to purchase an Acer netbook purchase a Thinkpad T400 or R400.