This GE lightbulb expired after just 5/100 of one percent of its promised useful life. And it is not the first of these bulbs I have seen fail so quickly. That's why I wrote the install date right on the base and save my receipt.

The idea of a product warranty is fairly simple: a company “warrants” that, should their product fail in a specified period of time and circumstances, they will repair or replace it. But the implication of the product warranty is far more subtle: it tells the consumer what level of reliability they should expect. In short, a warranty is all about confidence. But when does a warranty become a confidence game?

Typical retail products are backed by warranties ranging from a few months to a few years. Some products, such as cars and major appliances, are warranted for far longer. Products generally carry a warranty that matches their expected lifetime, and consumers have come to expect that products will last roughly this long.

But there can be quite a bit of gamesmanship in product warranties. Companies can “one up” their competitors by offering longer warranties, a typical tactic for up-and-coming car manufacturers, for example. A longer warranty is a promise to consumers that product quality has improved, as well as a security blanket in case this is untrue.

Companies also game the terms of their warranties. It is not uncommon to find that the “10 year warranty” on a new car only covers the engine and transmission, or that the 3 year warranty offered by Apple only includes one year of technical support. But the generous length of coverage is what gets attention, regardless of the terms and conditions.

Companies know this, and sometimes they offer warranties that they never expect to be called on to meet. Consider the incredible shrieking warranties on hard disk drives in the wake of the Thai flooding disaster. Seagate and Western Digital did not suddenly begin to cut corners on drive quality. Rather, they simply decided that they could no longer afford the extra cost of drive replacement and shrunk the warranty to match.

A recent example in my hands was a compact fluorescent (CFL) floodlight that carried a 4 year warranty from GE. It failed after just 41 days of occasional use in my kitchen, not the 6000 hours promised on the package. But the terms of the warranty made it clear that the company never expected to replace the product: I would have to mail it to Cleveland at my own expense, along with my original sales receipt, in hopes of receiving a replacement. This replacement transaction would probably cost far more than the bulb itself, so it is clear that the warranty was just a bunch of hot air.

I rarely purchase extended warranties for products, and never even consider offbrand or store offered warranty products. These are generally a scam, with vendors hoping that customers will forget or misplace warranty materials before a claim is needed. The only exception for me is AppleCare, which I happily purchased on my MacBook Pro after having the logic board replaced in my previous Apple computer. I even purchased the new AppleCare+ package for my iPhone 4S, since I really can’t survive without a phone.

What does this say about warranties and consumer expectations? Clearly, companies know that customers put a great deal of faith in product warranties, whether deserved or not. And customers have come to expect that a product with a longer warranty will offer a longer useful life. Sadly, this is often not the case, and many companies never expects to live up to the expectations they set right on the package.

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2011. | What’s the Point of a Warranty, Anyway?
This post was categorized as Apple, Personal, Terabyte home. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

My HP Photosmart inkjet printer just started complaining about "Ink Cartridge(s) Expired"!

HP’s inkjet printer ink cartridges are really expensive, so I’m always annoyed when my printer runs out. But my HP Photosmart C6180 started complaining that the cartridges are expired, prompting me to replace them before they’re even empty! I decided to look into the matter, and I’m not happy with the explanation.

How Does An Ink Cartridge “Expire”?

HP’s official ink expiration FAQ isn’t all that helpful. I came away wanting more information than the basic facts explained there:

• Most HP inks don’t expire, but those that do fall into two categories:
  1. HP 10, 11, 12, 13, and 14 are expired as in dead and the expiration message means you must replace them immediately and can’t use them anymore. These expire based on months past warranty or since installation, whichever comes first.
  2. The expiration messages for HP 02, 18, 38, 70, 88, 177, 363, 777, and 801 are more like guidelines, so you can keep using the ink at risk of your warranty. It’s not clear why or when these expire.
• If the ink expires, it’s “to protect the system” from damage presumably caused by “air ingestion and water evaporation”.
• The printers listed are all a few years old. I’m no expert, but it looks like the more-modern HP printers don’t use expiring ink.

So, apparently, HP engineered their mid-2000′s ink cartridges to expire. Although I pressed for a better explanation from HP’s printer group, no elaboration was forthcoming. I guess I’m left to my own devices to figure this out.

How To Respond To The “Ink Cartridge(s) Expired” Message

What to do? Should you press "OK" and keep using an expired cartridge?

If you have a printer that expires ink cartridges (and allows you to override and continue working), you have a choice to make:

1. You can press the “OK” button and keep using the expired cartridge. This prevents you from wasting money on new ink when the old one still works, but HP says any damage caused as a result will not be covered under warranty.
2. You can replace the cartridge with a new one and waste whatever ink remained in the old one. This preserves your warranty but wastes costly ink.

I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest that you press “OK” and keep using expired ink. Normally I wouldn’t recommend that people go against manufacturer recommendations, but this is a somewhat-special circumstance: The inkjet printer business is very competitive, with new printers heavily discounted in hopes of future ink sales. It probably make financial sense to risk damaging the printer instead of wasting the ink. The six inks in my HP Photosmart C6180 cost about half as much as an entire new printer that doesn’t use expiring ink.

Plus, the warranty on my Photosmart ran out years ago. In fact, I imagine almost everyone seeing the warnings above are no longer covered by HP’s standard one-year warranty! It’s hard to get too upset about such a short warranty period anyway, especially when replacement printers are so cheap.

Did this cause HP Photosmart Ink System Failure – Error: 0xc19a0035? I have no idea!

Stephen’s Stance

Although it’s incredibly wasteful to toss out a generally-functional printer, the economic angle is hard to argue. With no warranty to worry about and killer new models like the C410a costing under $225, why not just roll the dice with an expired cartridge? In fact, the D110A is currently on sale for the same $60 that buys a single set of inks for my C6180! Both of these support Apple’s new AirPrint technology, too!

So I continued the “right-arrow then OK” dance with my expired ink cartridges, and I suggest you do the same. When your printer finally dies, recycle it and step up to one that doesn’t use expiring inks.

Note: Some of these links include affiliate codes that help pay for this blog. For example, buying an Amazon Kindle with this link sends a few bucks my way! But I don't write this blog to make money, and am happy to link to sites and stores that don't pay anything. I like Amazon and buy tons from them, but you're free to buy whatever and wherever you want.

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2010. | What Does HP Printer “Ink Cartridge Expired” Mean?
This post was categorized as Apple, Everything, Personal, Terabyte home. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

Update: Due to the massive and frequent AppleCare fraud cases on eBay, I can no longer recommend buying it there. You may save money, or you may buy something that Apple rejects as illegitimate months or years later. Since the Bing cashback offer is expired, too, this whole article isn’t worth much anymore. Sorry!

After my adventure with the green-light non-working keyboard, I decided I love my MacBook too much to risk losing it. Plus, in tight economic times, I’m not sure I’ll be able to justify the expense to replace it if it broke. So I decided to pony up for AppleCare, and I ended up getting a great deal on it.

AppleCare has got to be one of the best things Apple has going, both for the company and its customers. They benefit by tacking on an incredibly high-margin add-on, and we benefit by getting one of the best warranty programs in the business.

But is AppleCare worth it? For the MacBook Pro, AppleCare retails for $349. This is roughly 20% of what I paid for my (discounted previous-model) MacBook Pro. That’s a lot of money for something I may never use! Todd at O’Reilly did the math and showed that it’s not a bad deal in general for the high-end models like my Pro, and I’d love to have it just in case it fries its CPU like my Dell did.

Got It!

So I went looking for a better deal, and boy did I find one! Although Amazon and MacMall had some discounts, I noticed that people are selling AppleCare licenses on eBay for much less, even less than $200. Plus, Microsoft’s Live Search was paying a 20% rebate for eBay purchases! Isn’t that amusing – Microsoft will pay me $40 to buy an AppleCare warranty!

Although I was a bit concerned about buying something intangible like AppleCare from an eBay seller, the one I picked had literally thousands of positive comments, so I took the plunge using PayPal, which offers fraud protection.

I bought the MacBook Pro warranty, part number MA515LL/A, for $195.99 with no shipping – he just emailed the code about 10 seconds after I clicked “buy it now” and paid. I quickly jumped over to Apple’s registration site, entered his code and my serial number, and verified that everything is kosher. In six weeks, Microsoft will pay me a $39.20 rebate, bringing the total cost down to $156.79, or 9.2% of the cost of my Mac!

I asked the seller about his cheap prices, and he claims he (and others) buy the licenses in bulk as Apple dealers and just cut the margin to the absolute minimum. Since Apple accepted the code, I assume it’s all legit.

How to get AppleCare for cheap

1. Figure out the exact product number you’re looking for by clicking on the “Buy” link on Apple’s web site
2. Go to live.com and create a cashback account
3. Enter the part number in the live.com search box
4. Click the Cashback icon for eBay in the advertisement box at the top – if it’s not there, search for some other product like a Zune or a Wii, and know that the percentage changes often
5. Select a seller – I used bleedblak
6. Buy it, pay with PayPal, and you should get the same deal as me

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2008. | Got Some AppleCare For Cheap
This post was categorized as Apple. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

Although mine remains pristine, I’ve been wary of the delicate connector since day 1. Making matters worse, Apple has patented the MagSafe connection, so no third-party alternatives are available.

Up until yesterday, Apple refused to admit that their design caused these failures, and folks report mixed success in securing replacements (under warranty) when they have failed. Purchasing a new power supply from Apple is an $80 proposition, but many have been forced to do just that.

However, as of yesterday, Apple officially announced that they will evaluate and replace defective power supplies whether under warranty or not. All one has to do is bring the unit (not the computer) in to an Apple store’s Genius Bar. I imagine they will be replacing quite a few of these in the next month or so, and supplies might become scarce.

What I’d really like to see is a redesign of the thing to make it less prone to failure. The MacBook Air’s connector is angled so the cord runs alongside the machine instead of sticking out, a positive move in my eyes. But the Air uses a low-wattage supply so one cannot use it with a MacBook, let alone a MacBook Pro.

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2008. | Apple Comes Clean on MagSafe Failures
This post was categorized as Apple. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.