Tuesday, April 8, 2008
Beware of short warranties
Last week I tried to read some data from a 1 GB PNY USB memory stick that I had stored away a couple of months ago. It wouldn't read. The drive is in some kind of "unknown" format according to several computers I plugged it in to.
Nor could I reformat the drive. It's just dead. Fortunately, the data lost was not important, I have it elsewhere. But imagine if I were counting on having that data? Imagine if I had used that USB flash drive as critical backup?
Checking, I bought it in 2006 and it had a one-year warranty. I used it once, to write that data, then put it away. Today I chucked it into the trash. Money down the drain, but at least no painful data loss.
It used to be that large appliances came with a three-year warranty. Now it's one year. Guess what—there's a reason that manufacturers won't stand by their products as long as they used to. The reason is that many products are crap. They won't last.
With regard to computer shop "bargains" or sales on the web, I suggest checking into the manufacturer's warranty before ordering. I've owned a 250 Mb hard disk that I used for local backup, purchased originally on sale at CompUSA. It had a one-year warranty and expired a month after its warranty ran out. I now am wiser and won't do that again.
When you see a bargain, you can often discover problems with Google's help. Put the word "review" ahead of the item name and part number and see if you can find other users' experience documented on the web. It works for computer peripherals, for digital cameras, for most anything that has been around a while.
Very often a web source like Amazon will find itself with a stock of lemons on hand. The only way they can make lemonade is to push the product out quickly at a low price and make their problem into our problem. Don't fall for it. Check first.
You can get disk drives with three-year warranties and good reviews. Some USB flash drives have lifetime warranties. Wouldn't they be a better investment over the long run?
There are other PNY drives in my drawer. Each is now a potential little time bomb, waiting to nail me if I depend on it.
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