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STeve, Does that equation change -- for institutionally-owned fleet machines as well as for individually-owned computers -- as the price of decent laptops continues to plummet? Back when a reasonable laptop cost $1500 or $2000 or more, a $250 no-questions-asked warranty made sense. Today, when reasonable laptops can be had for $750 or less, does it make more sense to roll the dice? Recently an attorney friend needed a new laptop to be mostly kept stationary and we ended up buying a 17" (and over 7 pounds) HP model for $500. We said no to the all-inclusive warranty. It's a roll of the dice, you figure it depreciates rapidly and it's not for road warrior use, so he went with the dice. How does this equation change for fleets of laptops, especially those that roam daily? /rich PS -- As a long time lover of Thinkpads, I finally abandoned them when the cheaper Lenovos featured crappy non-sculpted keys -- a Thinkpad with a lousy keyboard is not a Thinkpad -- and the premium ones with real TP keyboards way outpriced the market. > This issue has only come up for me once, in 13 years. My solution > for laptops is to get the all-encompasing warranty on a thinkpad, > such that no matter what they do, its covered. Accidental dropping > of the laptop seems a legitimate blameless problem, so thats > covered. > > --STeve Andre' > Political Science > >