Quick fact check: Applecare is 10-15% of the cost of macbook airs and 24" iMacs. Maybe an ipod or something is higher, but they are replacing a lot of units dro

Quick fact check: Applecare is 10-15% of the cost of macbook airs and 24" iMacs. Maybe an ipod or something is higher, but they are replacing a lot of units dropped in toilets there. Having bought many apple products starting back with that newfangled Apple][+... I don't buy Applecare on desktop machines. It isn't rocket science and when they do screw up (one of my iMacG5s went through 3 motherboards with the bad capacitor problems) they typically cover it on extended warranty. Same with an early graphite Airport, bad caps 13 months out, but I replaced them myself before an extended warranty was announced. Laptops are different though, there is an incentive to cut structure and flirt with the fringes of heat dissipation... I'm about even on laptops. Just before the 3 year period ends I send them in to repair the accumulated defects, such as a mild case of backlight blotchulism and a flakey keyboard backlight in a PBG4. I've extended the life of my PBG4 from 3 to 5 years because I had the warranty. I would not have paid $800 to have it repaired as a 3 year old machine. If I had had applecare on my PB5300 I would have made them fix the SCSI port, but managed to live without it. Just think of it as insurance. Apple is telling you the expected cost of repairs for years 2 and 3 is around 10-15% of the purchase price. Most machines will not have any Applecare work and it is money wasted, unless you live close enough to the wire that an unexpected $800 bill to keep your computer running is a problem, then you might like it for the insurance aspect. It added 13% to the cost of the lowest end Macbook Air that I just bought my wife. (Yeah, I know, I paid extra for a slower machine, but she carries it around a lot and wouldn't notice "fast".)