Comment Consumer vs Commercial Electronics (Score 1) 253
A good portion of my job is to asset risk and advise on extended coverage and warranty enhancements for small/medium and enterprise businesses on there fleet of servers, desktops, laptops etc. From what I know from that and what I see I tend to only buy warranty on electronics that I spent a fair bit on and that I would be inconvienced if they were to fail.
You have to look at it how important is the device to you, how long to you expect to be using, and of course how much would it cost to replace the unit completely.
In business when it comes to servers for example you have to figure out how critical the server functions are, how long of a life the server is expected to have as well as the cost impact to the company if that server was to go down. Its the last one that usually has the most impact to a client, especially when they compare the cost of it down for a hour to how much the enhanced warranty is. Of course things like a test/dev server would likely get a reduced warranty compared to an exchange server or a domain controller.
Just take the general idea there and apply it to your own purchasing habits. Extended warranty on a cell phone... what you are fucking stupid will you even want that phone in a year after the newest of the new comes out? A TV or washer dryer that you want to last for 5+ years, I think its a good idea.
Be smart about it, listen to the salesman, ignore his pitch but listen to the details, what does this warranty do for you.