Originally Posted by FrinkTL
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First, I agree with you, as I have had my iPAQ211 for just about 2 years now without hardware incident (since the initial ones that caused me to get a couple of replacement models). The machine is simply awesome...and the screen quality is way beyond the X51v I replaced it with.
As for your comment on giving up on Next Day warranties, I sincerely hope that you have more reason for giving up on every single vendor's Next Day warranty than a single bad experience that you had with a watch 15 (woah, FIFTEEN) years ago. I mean, SERIOUSLY? You've got to be kidding. Every vendor is different, especially when talking about different technology "silos" (e.g., computers vs. TVs vs. stoves vs. washing machines).
Within the computer silo, there are still companies that stand behind their products and warranties. Dell is one, HP Home (in my experience) is another, Sony too. Granted, you have follow them down their scripted path to get the service fullfillment, but there is a reason for that. They simply cannot afford to replace every computer just because you took the time to call their 800 number; they'd go bankrupt within a few months to a year. And with computers running a Windows OS, nearly any software or device driver could have been installed that could render hardware completely inoperable or the system unbootable. I've been on the side of the expert user who knows what's wrong and just needing to get them to accept the list of possible causes I've been able to isolate - and I've lived that fustration personally. But I do understand their position of the near-impossible task of supporting a system that is so open that it allows its users, essentially, to crash it. The sheer number of possiblities of what could be installed on any computing device is mind-boggling.
I always buy next day/on-site extended warranties for my mission-critical computing devices. Even if the service turns out to be less than I'd hoped, it will always be better than if I didn't have the service at all.
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Of course there have been other experiences and reasons, I've just found that good companies back their products and support them well while bad companies try to get you to pay for it. My first Axim arrived with a bad LCD and Dell had me a new one in two days - very easy. I've just never have had a time when I've said, "Damn, I should have gotten that extra warranty" while there have been a number of times I've spent hours on the phone wondering what the hell did I pay for. Your results may vary.
I can agree that a "Mission critical" item that you can't be without for more than 24 hours needs that kind of backup service. But as Jake has pointed out, they often are not really 24 hour replacements so I asked what the ratio would be of good to bad experiences with these types of warranties. Might make a good poll.