Extended warranties are a crock of shit.

Sure, short-term warranties make sense, protecting you from manufacturing defects that appear only after a few weeks of use.

But any product used longer before needing an initial repair is invariably just hitting the first of many stops along the slow and painful road to total malfunction and breakdown.

I say this based not just on past experience, but on current. Because, in the last six months, my MacBook Pro had had its logic board, video RAM, left fan, right fan, hard drive, and display replaced. Essentially, the only thing I have left of the original computer is the chassis and keyboard. And, still, the damn thing crashes every ten minutes.

By now, the time wasted waiting for each of those restarts has added up to hours of lost work worth many times over the cost of a new computer. But with AppleCare extended warranty in hand, I’ve been loath to give up completely.

As my computer has frozen twice while drafting even this short posting, however, I think I’m finally biting the bullet and upgrading. Or, rather, cross-grading, as I’ll be replacing the MacBook Pro with an essentially identical (albeit 0.2GHZ faster) MacBook Pro. Some of us never learn.