By Gene Ayres, Your Consumer Curmudgeon

We've all bought products that didn't live up to our expectations. This is especially common with cars, of course, per last week's dispatch. But can you imagine buying a brand new car that had, say, only a one year warranty, only to be driving along as usual, doing nothing particularly strenuous (not towing a tractor trailer up Mt. Rainier) when that engine, maybe only a month out of warranty, blows its timing belt, all the pistons and valves merge into a mass of bent metal, and you no longer have a car? And the manufacturer and dealer shrug their shoulders and say, oh well, too bad, better luck next time, as it’s towed away at your expense? And the net value of that pile of junk you bought a year ago is zero?

Well, granted laptops are not as expensive as cars, but they aren't cheap either, and the above scenario is exactly what happened to my one year old Acer Extensa 5260 last week, a couple of months out of warranty. To be exact, I went to turn it on a week ago after having put it into hibernation the night before and it wouldn't turn on. The start button would light up a few seconds; it would hum a moment, then go silent. Nothing would work, holding the button down, unplugging and replugging, waiting thirty seconds, and all the usual troubleshooting procedures couldn’t get it to turn on.

Thinking maybe there was something wrong with the starter switch, I called Acer. They said it's out of warranty, but I could ship it to their distribution center in California for an analysis, for $199 (ever notice how these fees are always just under $200?). Instead, I took it to a local PC doctor. This of course means a $45 diagnostic fee, which is fair enough, and way better than $199 plus shipping. Plus I had my answer in hours: the motherboard had failed. This was a new one for me. The motherboard doesn't even have any moving parts, how could it fail? And yet it had. And the cost for replacement of a motherboard on an Acer laptop would run about $550 (I didn't ask Acer how much they'd charge, but I doubt it would be less). In other words, the computer was kaput, because for $550 you can buy a perfectly good brand new laptop, even at Office Depot, at least when it's on sale. The one bit of good news was that the hard drive was still good, and for a very reasonable $100 I had it removed, and converted into a very cool Sunbright ME USB portable hard drive.

OK, for those of you who say, sure but you could have spent an extra $195 for a two-year extended warranty (just like car dealers will happily offer you an extended warranty for only another $1900 or so). These warranties are historically just another rip-off, and another way for G.M. or Ford or Office Depot to make a few billion extra bucks. Yes, Office Depot, where I bought this laptop, does offer an extended warranty. For $195, as I said. But I have been buying and using computers since 1981 and have never had one fail in this manner, especially in so short a time. A fan, maybe. Even a hard drive or disk drive, at times. All easily replaceable for a modest cost. One of my closest friends, in fact, has a Toshiba laptop she has been using for ten years, and she has never turned it off! Granted, it does make funny sounds, but it still works fine.

So in simplistic terms, you could sum things up simply (if life is ever simple): always buy Toshiba, and never buy Acer.

Unfortunately, life is never so simple, especially for we consumers who have to pinch pennies and buy, according to price, what's being offered on sale. Which is, of course, what drew me to Office Depot in the first place. They had these Acers on sale, assured me Acer was a fine product, and I bit, hook line and sinker. Which, I have to add, doesn't make for a ringing endorsement for Office Depot either. When I went back to see what they could do about this total loss, their response was simple: nothing. Tough luck bud, next time buy our overpriced profiteering extended warranty.

Now, in case you think maybe I had it coming due to overuse, excessive bumping and banging, or whatever one might do to laptops that might cause such a catastrophe, I have taken it on exactly one road trip, shortly after buying it, and one plane trip, last summer, and in neither case was it hurled into a tree, trunk, luggage bin, or bashed into a light pole. My primary use, apart from writing this weekly blog, was for email, book manuscripts (a few hours a day maximum), and that's about it. In fact, basically I used it as a desktop and kept it plugged in most of the time. So the battery got minimal use (and is still good, by the way).

Anyone need a hardly used Acer Extensa battery? I'm sure we can work something out.

Gene Ayres is a career writer, author and freelance journalist. His latest book is A Billion to One: An American Insider in the New China. He can be found at: www.geneayres.org.