Some Tech purchasing experiences and advice...

I recently had a relative asking me advice on whether or not to get extended warranty coverage, what kind of laptop cpu to buy, etc.

I replied in a couple of emails.

I've pasted the (non-personal) response in the READ MORE section of this article. I hope folks find it useful.

I could be (slightly) off on the processors information, but I think from memory I'm giving reasonably correct information without getting too technical.

If I made a glaring mistake, please email me at hawke at hawkes-haven dot com.

Comments on the articles are disabled because of spammers, sorry.

I plan to move off of this nuke based ( piece of phlegm software ) website software to zope/plone (as my other high end sites are) eventually, so that will be less of an issue then, hopefully if I have time in August.

Meanwhile, read the article and enjoy....

Question #1: "...what does dual core have to do with the performance of a laptop? Would
a 1.83ghz cpu be better or which speed should I get, I need this computer to last me for 3 more years."

Question #2: "...u know of any theft or
accidental damage insurance for a tablet/ laptop. does anything like that exist? or is it non-economical? would really like ur advice."

Responses if you click the "Read More" section of this article...

Answer #1 ( x86 CPU's ): Dual core is supposed to be closer to a dual processor setup (though it's
close, it's not QUITE as good as two cpu's, but for the price it's decent).
So you get better multi-tasking performance (can do more things
simultaneously).
A few things to watch for as well.
Stay away from ANY AND ALL CELERON cpu's and AMD equivalents. They are dog
slow.
For example a 1.6 Ghz Celeron performs about the same a 700 Mhz Pentium III
(Regular), or 600 Mhz Athlon.
Centrino is optimized for a balance (on mobile units) between performance,
battery life, heat, and size.
Full CPUs (P4, etc.) are optimized for more performance in desktops (and high
end laptops) at the expense of running hotter, consuming more energy, etc.
Xeon's are extremely high performance (lots of L2 cache) mainly for high end
servers, and multiple processor (2-4-8+ cpu's in one system, etc.) systems.
If you use linux, then a 1.83 will be fine, but in the windoze world, XP is a
bit slow/dodgy on anythin less than 2+ Ghz.
I hope that helps.


Answer #2 ( insurance / extended warranty ):
Some places offer combination warranty/damage/theft protection. Though most
only warranty/damage (no theft) protection. Ranging from 1 to 4 years.
Be VERY careful to get the fine print on the warranty policy though.
For example:
CompUSA offers an extended 2 or 3 year warranty. See the year long woes I posted about my Vaio GRT-170 on this site several times (in the IT Topics section for those details). But they only replace the
COMPONENT that fails, not the entire unit. For example, I had that Sony Vaio
(with 2.6Ghz cpu) laptop back in 2004.
It kept overheating. I took it in. They cleaned it and sent it back. (After a
month they returned it)
It kept overheating. I sent it back, they returned it after month after
soldering the heat sinks to help it cool better. That helped.
Then the screen died. They kept it 3 weeks before it came back, with a broken
keyboard (their fault).
Then later the dvd drive failed. They replaced it after 3 weeks.
Then later the hard drive failed. They replaced it after 2 weeks.
Then later the motherboard failed. They replaced it after 6 weeks.
I said, "Didn't your policy state that after the third time a product fails
you'll replace it?" To which they responded, "Only if the same COMPONENT of
the device fails more than three times." For example if the screen died
three times, on the fourth time they would replace.
I took this Vaio back NINE times before they finally gave me in store credit.
So I do NOT recommend anyone getting any higher end products like a laptop
through CompUSA anymore, nor any place with a similar warranty policy.
Best Buy and Circuit City have a replacement policy that they will replace the
entire unit if it has more than three component failures, period. So that's a
much better policy.
Many offer breakage coverage so that if you break the LCD screen, they still
replace it no questions ask (a very worthwhile option I believe with
laptops).
Generally you'll pay between $200-$400 more for this 2, 3, or 4 year added
coverage of extended warranty and damage protection, but on a $1,500+
product, I consider that reasonable. I'd say about half the time I end up
being glad I did.
I hope that was helpful! ;0-)

Cheers!
-Hawke