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Is a 1-year basic warranty enough?
First things first, a 1-year warranty should be the minimum warranty you accept. You might see notebooks being sold for $399 with a 90-day warranty and, while tempting, you should realize that cheap notebooks are more likely to develop problems and if that $399 purchase breaks after 6 months it's not a good deal at all. The absolute minimum you should look for is a 1-year manufacturer warranty.
Many notebooks that are going to fail due to some material or manufacturing defect will do so within the first year. So if you're looking to keep price down and simply can't afford a warranty extension, you can at least know the chance of your notebook failing after the 1st year due to a manufacturing defect decreases. The 1st year is the "break-in" period.
However, notebooks are a technology item that gets carried around, exposed to high levels of heat from internal components, can get lots and lots of usage, have mechanical moving parts, have varying levels of case quality construction and are prone to abuse. Think about it, what other $1,000+ technology item do you throw in a backpack, shove books on top of and then proceed to run into doorways with it or not so gently place it on a flat surface?
Laptops are a uniquely expensive and extensively used and abused item -- because of this problems can certainly crop up after the first year if you use and carry around your laptop a lot. In general, the more you use a notebook and carry it around the more likely it is to eventually break. If you know you will be using your laptop day-in and day-out and it will get moved around, a 1-year warranty is not enough -- you should strongly consider 2 - 3 years if you can afford it. If the laptop will simply be sitting on a desk, used now and again and you have confidence you're buying a well built product, then a 1-year warranty should be just fine.
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