Hacker News Reader

Do oter manufacturers except Panasonic cover spills? How is the machine milled MacBooks designed to fail at the first sign of trouble?

The batteries are actually designed to last for many years and pretty easy to replace with a screwdriver.

My MBP from 2008 is still going strong, and that's the less solidly built pre-unibody. Unlike many others, Apple extended the warranty because of the nVidia chipset bug.

View on HN

I don't know about warranties for spills, but Thinkpads have a drain to greatly reduce liquid damage.

The last time I checked, most major manufacturers except Apple (Lenovo, Dell, HP, ...) let you buy Accidental Damage Protection (which does cover spills among many, many other things).

From what I hear, Apple can sometimes be nice about accidents, but other times they're sticklers about the rules.

Here in New Zealand we have The Consumer Guarantees Act. The beauty of it is that the item is covered for as long as a reasonable person would expect (or something like that), and is suitably vague about how long this. Here is a case where a 4 year old computer was repaired at the manufacturers expense. buying extended warranties is kind of a waste here, as complaing to a government agency may well get you the same result, for free (it has worked for me). http://www.consumerblogs.org.nz/tech/2009/04/squaring-up-to-...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com