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

[Preston Crow]

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
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.