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Release Notes: Sometimes It's Good to Buy the Extended Warranty

Will Smith — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 20:30:00 -0500

I suffered a loss recently: My trusty, first-generation iPhone’s touch screen gave up the ghost. On a sunny day in early June, it let loose this mortal coil. And, like every other piece of technology I’ve ever owned, the touch screen stopped responding at the worst possible moment—as I was in a cab on my way to the first leg of a two-week trip.

Upon landing in Los Angeles, my first stop was an Apple store, where one of the Apple-proclaimed “geniuses” explained my options. My first choice was to get a replacement phone for a mere $200 (I hadn’t bothered to buy the extended warranty). My other option was simply to pound sand. I took my busted phone and bid the Apple store and its smug “geniuses” farewell, vowing to never buy another iPhone.

Next stop was AT&T to purchase a new, non-iPhone phone. I put my name on the we’ll-help-you-when-we’re-good-and-damn-well-ready list, and started looking at phones. After an hour or so of waiting, I walked out of the building with a new Blackberry Bold and considered my mission accomplished.

Of course, when I returned to my car, it had a parking ticket on it. And, frankly, things went downhill from there. Connecting the Blackberry to my company’s mail server took multiple calls to our IT department, a call to AT&T, and the sacrifice of one chicken. (Well, actually we ate fried chicken for dinner and I dropped a drumstick on the ground by accident, but that still counts.) After more than a year using the iPhone, acclimating to the Blackberry was difficult. I had become accustomed to the convenience of the iPhone. I liked carrying 16GB of music, but I loved having access to thousands of apps in the App Store, so naturally I went searching for replacements. While I found Blackberry apps that connected me to Twitter and Facebook, I didn’t find analogues for other apps I regularly use—the ones that help me manage my expenses, find a good spot to eat, or entertain myself. Hell, the built-in web browser even choked on some pages. While I eventually managed to connect my calendar to the Bold, I mourned the loss of everything else—from Yelp to Flight Control.

After a week of use, it was clear that the Blackberry Bold wasn’t a good fit for me. Yes, it did excel in a few areas—namely, download speeds, mail, instant messaging, and maps—but it still had to go. On the day I returned the Bold, Apple announced a new iPhone and a price cut. And after careful consideration, I swallowed my pride and pre-ordered an iPhone 3GS.

Whether I like the way Apple treats its customers or behaves in general, I can’t argue with good tech. And the iPhone remains one helluva piece of hardware.

Also, this time I bought the extended warranty.

[Editor's Note: This edition of Release Notes was originally published in our September 2009 issue]

Sony Extends Vaio Warranty for Nvidia Flub

Paul Lilly — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 09:42:22 -0500

Remember that whole fiasco with Nvidia graphics-based notebooks giving up the ghost because of a "weak die/packaging material set?" That manufacturing defect ended up costing Nvidia millions of dollars in warranty repairs. It also led to extended warranties by some OEMs, the latest of which is Sony.

"Sony, in cooperation with Nvidia, has been looking into any possible effect to Vaio notebooks with Nvidia graphic processors. Until recently we had not identified any Vaio models that were affected by this issue," Sony said in an eSupport USA notice.

The statement went on to disclose that a "very small percentage" of Nvidia-based Vaio PCs may exhibit "distorted video, duplicate images, or a blank screen" because of the faulty GPU.

According to Sony, affected models include the Vaio VGN-AR1xx, VGN-AR2xx, VGN-AR3xx, VGN-FZ1xx, VGN-FZ2xx, VGN-FZ3xx, VGN-FZ4xx, VGC-LT1xx, and and VGC-LT2xx series. For those who need repair service because of a failing GPU, Sony said it will provide a three year warranty extension.

Image Credit: Sony via devicedaily.com

Nvidia Warranty Costs Much Higher Than Expected

Justin Kerr — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 15:38:24 -0500

Nvidia’s second quarter profits are evidence that poor quality costs much more than just bad PR. The company recorded a charge of $119 million to cover warranty costs associated with faulty die and weak packaging materials used in its graphics chips. This is significantly better than the $196 million it had already written off for the same reason, but it was still much higher than analysts were expecting.

Most of these issues can be traced back to a faulty solder bump that was discovered in its 8M-series mobile graphics chip. Nvidia estimated at the time that the warranty costs could be somewhere in the range of $200 million, but clearly the $315+ million they have already spent shows they were perhaps a bit overly conservative in their estimates. This might be a result of the problem reportedly cropping up in G92 and G94 series mobile cards as well, but Nvidia has been pretty tight lipped on the issue.

When asked to comment on the charge Nvidia downplayed the impact and described them as a small distraction. Nvidia President and CEO Jen-Hsun Huang claims it hasn’t impacted Nvidia’s ability to launch new products, and he expects profits to rise in the near future. Huang is being optimistic, but he is likely hoping to reassure investors who saw the company’s revenue drop this quarter to $776.5 million from $892.6 million only a year ago. “The company has invested in new products such as Tesla, a graphics processing unit for high-performance computing, and low-power Tegra chips for mobile devices. The products should start contributing to the revenue stream soon”, Huang said.

New Hack Lets You Convert eBooks for Viewing on a Kindle 2

Pulkit Chandna — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 19:56:43 -0500

A few weeks after Jesse Vincent, an inveterate hacker, yielded to his strong urge to hack another popular gadget, Savory was born. Savory is a Kindle 2 app that converts .pdf and .epub files into the .mobi format supported by the ebook reader. Though similar solutions have been available on the internet for quite sometime, Savory is unique as it executes the conversion on Amazon’s ebook reader itself. But like all great things, Savory has its limitations. It doesn’t support Kindle 1 and won’t convert ebooks protected by DRM. Please note that running unsigned code may void your manufacturer’s warranty.

Image Credit: Puhalablog(WP)

Seagate to Cut Bare Drive Warranties in January 2009

Mark Edward Soper — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 16:19:39 -0600

Bare (aka "OEM") hard disk drives have always been good deals for tech-savvy shoppers (aka the typical Maximum PC reader) - buy a drive in an anti-static bag, provide your own mounting screws, download a disk management utility from the vendor's website, and you can save a lot of greenbacks, without a sacrifice in warranty coverage.

That's about to change. Channel Register reports that Seagate's bare drives for desktop and laptop computers are about to take a 2-year cut in warranty coverage. Starting January 3, 2009, bare drives will have 3-year limited warranties, compared to the current 5-year limited warranty. Seagate says that they'll use the ship-to-dealers date of January 3, 2009 and beyond to calculate warranty terms, but I'd recommend holding on to your sales receipt, especially if you're buying a last-minute Christmas gift or grabbing an after-Christmas sale.

Why did Seagate make this change? According to its Bare Drive Warranty FAQ page, Seagate answers the question "Why is this change being made?' thus:

We have identified the opportunity to offer our customers warranty terms that we believe are in line with industry standard warranty offerings, and that better align to the requirements of our partners and customers.

How does Seagate's new, shorter limited warranty line up with its competitors? Western Digital's Caviar Blue and Caviar Green desktop drives and Scorpio Blue notebook drives in bulk (aka OEM) or retail pack also have 3-year limited warranties, but the higher-performance Caviar Black and Scorpio Black drives have 5-year limited warranties. Most Hitachi and Samsung hard disk drives also have 3-year limited warranties. It looks as if Seagate's claim to be bringing its bare drive limited warranties into line with the industry is justified.

So, Seagate fans, how do you feel about this change? Are you going to lock in a 5-year limited warranty by buying now, or think about alternatives? Hit Comment and tell us what you think.

Asus Touts New No-Cost Advance RMA Program

Paul Lilly — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 06:55:37 -0600

Troubleshooting a dead motherboard can be enough of a pain in the backside all on its own, but once you've reached the conclusion that your board has given up the ghost, the prospect of a lengthy wait for a replacement only adds insult to injury. Asus seeks to alleviate this frustration with its new Asus Premium Service (APS) program, which offers eligible motherboard owners the option of having a replacement board cross-shipped free of charge.

"ASUS offers today’s discerning motherboard customer the widest range of choice for enthusiast platforms,” said Sales Director Timothy Lin of ASUS North America. “By combining the most stable motherboards and unique features with comprehensive customer support, we expect ASUS motherboards to remain the enthusiast’s first choice."

Initially, a pair of X58-based boards qualify for the program along with several other high end models, including the latest Republic of Gamers (ROG) mobos.The no-cost advance-RMA service is good for one year after the original purchase date and a valid credit card is required. More details can be found on Asus' APS Service Terms page.

XFX Amends Lifetime Warranty, Gives Green Light to OC

Paul "One4yu2c" Lilly — Fri, 11 May 2007 13:08:04 -0500

Don't let the name fool you, ATITool is fully capable of overclocking nVidia hardware!

I'll admit it, I too get caught up in benchmarks when making a purchasing decision. If I'm paying top dollar for a swank new component, it better be the baddest mother on the block. Hell, the same principle applies when going the bang for buck route, where the goal is to receive max performance for every last nickel spent. Hey, that's part of what this hobby is all about, and entire online communities exist that offer little more than a haven for bragging rights. But let's face it, unless a component is a complete dud, there's little to no real-world performance separation from one piece of hardware to another at any given performance tier. Can you really tell the difference between a Biostar 8800GTX clocked at 575MHz/1800MHz, versus one from BFG clocked at 600MHz/1800MHz? If so, you could make a heckuva living recovering needles from haystacks in the dark. But for the rest of us, outside of scrutinizing benchmarks, there's not going to be a noticeable difference, and if pricing and features are comparable, what then becomes the deciding factor? For many of those in the nVidia camp, it's the warranty. Adopting the policies long held by memory manufacturers, lifetime backings are becoming increasingly popular for videocards (AMD/ATI parts haven't followed suit), as companies try to outdo each other and gain a marketing advantage. Most recently, XFX amended their warranty terms to be more competitive with EVGA's flexible policy, but is there enough to get excited over? And who has the best warranty of the bunch? Let's take a peek at how they break down:

PNY

PNY used to offer lifetime backings on their videocards, but they seem to have nixed the policy since the 6xxx days. Just as well too, because it was a misleading guarantee due to PNY's wording. Their definition of lifetime refered to the production runs, and whether or not the cards could be found "on the common market as a new product." So in other words, market trends in the fast evolving GPU world determined your true warranty period, which, in theory, could be as short as six months. Sounds more like the definition of weaksauce.

EVGA

On the opposite end of the lifetime spectrum, EVGA covers their cards for as long as they physically exist, regardless of whether they're still stocked on retail shelves or not. And to sweeten the pot, you're allowed to swap the heatsink/fan assembly, and can even overclock without invalidating the guarantee. In a nutshell, it's your card to do with as you wish, so long as you never cause any physical damage, such as a cracked PCB, broken capacitor, burn marks, or other such unpleasantries. It's a great policy at first glance, but a closer look reveals that it all goes out the window if you fail to register your card within 30 days of purchase, at which point you'd only be covered for one year. That's a stiffer penalty than what NBA referee Joey Crawford received in response to ejecting a player sitting on the bench for the malicious act of (*drum roll*)...smiling.

XFX

XFX also boasts a true lifetime warranty, and taking it one step further, you can transfer the backing to a second owner. For frequent upgraders that sell off their used equipment, XFX's Double Lifetime Warranty, as it's dubbed, makes for a great marketing bullet on EBay or trading forums. And in a move to remain competitive on paper, as of April 17th, XFX now also allows end users to overclock the card and replace the heatsink/fan assembly. Unfortunately, they've also adopted the same vexatious 30-day registration policy and accompanying penalty for non-compliance as EVGA.

BFG

On the surface, BFG's lifetime backing appears to be the most ho-hum out of the bunch. No concessions are made regarding heatsink/fan removal, nor do they condone end-user overclocking. They also specifically mention the Original Purchaser in the fine print, seemingly negating a transfer of terms to a subsequent owner. I brought this up to a BFG tech nearly 2 years ago, and was told at the time that they do in fact cover a second owner (I still have the email), and when queried again just the other day, was given a completely opposite answer. So officially, subsequent owners these days are out of luck, though I was never asked for any proof of purchase or registration information when initiating an RMA request on a card I had believed to be faulty (turns out it was not). I'll let you draw your own conclusion on that one.

Lifetime warranties are great and all, but enough pimping the fine print. Let's see some REAL extras thrown in!

Now that we have a better picture of each one's warranty policy, it begs the question, does it really matter? Maximum PC faithful know that warranties rarely get mentioned in the magazine, and don't play a factor in a product's scoring. And while it may feel warm and fuzzy to hug a policy allowing you to swap a heatsink, what are the chances that Asus (for a random example) is going to deny your claim if you put the original heatsink/fan back on the card before sending it in for repair? How many users volunteer the fact that they've overclocked when filling out an RMA request? In the end, I applaud these companies for offering true lifetime backings, but I can do without the meaningless fluff and accompanying red-tape penalties. My plea is this: Rather than separate oneself with fine-print gobledegook, let's see some real value added innovation. I'm not talking about the standard game bundles either (which range from crappy B titles, to hot A list hits), but something unique that hasn't been done. Throw in a coupon for a one year sub to Maximum PC magazine (check out their website, if you get a chance) or PC Gamer. Toss in a modest sized USB key packed with saved games, special quest items, maps and walkthroughs not easily found on Google, or other such niceties. Heck, cram a free kitten into the box, and I can think of at least one MPC staffer that would bite [[editor's note: damn straight!]]. Just don't try and sell me on legalese that, in my real-world setting, already exists.