[mythtv-users] OT: Seagate to reduce warranties on consumer drives to 3 years from 2009

[jedi]

On Fri, Dec 12, 2008 at 12:54:29PM -0500, Preston Crow wrote:
> On Fri, 2008-12-12 at 16:36 +0000, Alex Butcher wrote:
> > > Pushing your warranty would seem to imply that your products fail a
> > lot.
> > 
> > Quite the contrary; it implies that Seagate once had confidence that
> > they
> > could up the warranty from 3 to 5 years without having
> > repairs/replacements
> > cost very much.
> 
> The problem is that to support a warranty, Seagate has to keep a
> stockpile of replacement drives.  That's dead inventory that

    No they don't. They can simply provide replacements from new stock.
If they choose to stockpile obsolete hardware just so that they can 
avoid giving their customers an unintended upgrade then that's a highly
artificial problem of their own making (their own stupid problem really).

> depreciates.  A shorter warranty period suggests that they see a shorter
> product life cycle.
> 
> >From a consumer perspective, if I had a drive fail after two years, the
> product cycle is such that I wouldn't bother getting a warranty
> replacement, as the cost of shipping would be more than the value of the
> drive.  I would instead buy a new, much larger drive.