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From: henry@rochester.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.micro.mac
Subject: warranty flames (long)
Message-ID: <9249@rochester.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 25-Apr-85 14:37:57 EST
Article-I.D.: rocheste.9249
Posted: Thu Apr 25 14:37:57 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 27-Apr-85 02:58:52 EST
Sender: henry@rochester.UUCP
Organization: U. of Rochester, CS Dept.
Lines: 36

From: Henry.Kautz

With all the discussion back and forth about Apple's warranty policy,
and it's policy of discouraging users from poking around inside the
Mac, two points seem to have been overlooked:
1.  The Mac is extremely reliable.
2.  Applecare is *incredibly* cheap.
A computer is not a one-time investment.  It requires regular
maintenance costs.  After investing a couple of thousand dollars in my
computer, I am not about to take the chance that I'll have to plug
another thousand into it when the thing goes on the fritz.  So I buy a
service contract.  The standard cost of a 1-year contract on an IBM,
KayPro, what-have-you, is about 15% of the original price.  If I had a
small IBM, that cost me about $2000, I'll have to pay $300 a year, just
for the computer, not even counting the printer, etc!  On the other
hand, my $2000 Mac is covered under Applecare for less than $100 a
year.  So those nasty, money-grubbing people at Apple are putting $200
each year back into my pocket.  The cost of service contracts on the
Imagewriter and external disk drive are also cheaper than contracts on
equivalent products from other companies, although not as dramatically
less.  

Why is the Mac so much cheaper to maintain?  Because, of course, its a
closed box, and everything is soldered into place, and its a lean &
clean engineering job.  Yes, I have to pay more to upgrade the memory
in my Mac than I would in an IBM.  But that is just another cost that
figures into the total maintenance costs.  The bottom line is that
the Mac is now a very good buy, and getting better all the time, as the
base price and memory upgrade price continue to fall.  (And the Mac XL
is incredibly cheap, compared to an IBM XT or AT -- but thats another
story.)
---- Henry Kautz
	:uucp:	{seismo|allegra}!rochester!henry
	:arpa:	henry@rochester
	:mail:  Dept. of Comp. Sci., U. of Rochester, NY 14627
	:phone: (716) 275-5766