Is that a risk worth taking?

Shall I bet on the business-built quality of thinkpads and save $299 for not having 3 year warranty or it is really worth the money to have that warrant?

I have the following considerations:

1. I want to invest $300 on the hardware

2. When I take this machine back to my home country, I will have to pay custom duty to meet the requirements of global warranty

3. Many people buy thinkpads because it is 'better built', for buying an thinkpad, I already spend much more than buying a dell or hp.

What do you think guys?

 

Well.. I've read recently a report which talked about reliability of desktops
and notebook computers. While desktops reliability went up in recent years,
the notebook reliability didn't increase much. I don't remember the exact
numbers, but the failure rate of the average notebook is like
1st year - 9%
2nd year - 14%
3rd year - 22%
4th year - 36%

Basically the longer you have the notebook, the more chances of
failure you get (duh). But also the 4th year, every third notebook
fails. Get the real numbers though, cause I don't remember them
exactly.

 

i'd say get the best warranty you can at the get-go. you never know about your chances of upgrading the warranty (especially if a company decides to stop offering upgrades to warranties or something else happens).

it's, IMHO, more difficult to upgrade later...just play it safe

 

I saved myself some money by only getting the 1 year basic warranty. My belief is that if the laptop is going to have serious problems due to malfunctioning hardware or lemon parts, it'll occur within the first few months. The only component I think could possibly fail within the first year of use is a hard drive failure, and even then it is unlikely unless you like to play shake your laptop a lot. For your situation, you might want to find out the details of the 3 year warranty policy and make sure it is covered internationally if you intend to bring it to another country.

 

well, there are other things besides the HDD...the DVD drive could go out (in my experiences that is the first thing to go), you could get a fried motherboard (that happens to a lot of notebooks where I work), HDD (obviously)...

it isn't IBM, but some older HPs commonly had a problem with their AC jack...suddenly user's laptops would get AC or charge the battery...I know because my old (now long dead) zx5000 notebook had that flaw