- November 17, 2010 7:44 pm
Pick up an iPad in France, Great Britain, California, Canada, etc. and you’ll get the standard 1 year of AppleCare warranty protection with an optional second year for $99. Take a weekend trip to China, however, and you’ll be rewarded with an extra year — mandatory. You see, in China the iPad is classified as a netbook/laptop. And according to Chinese consumer laws, all “computers” must come with a minimum 2-year warranty.
As 9to5Mac points out, it is interesting to see the difference in perception concerning the iPad around the world. Here in the U.S., when people call the iPad a netbook/laptop, I chuckle.
The moral of the story: Get an iPad in China if you’re paranoid about hardware failures.
If you wanted a slap in the face to rocket you back into the sad sick little world that *used* to be the Xbox 360, a non-scientific poll (paper only) conducted by Game Informer revealed that the failure rate on Xbox 360′s (presumably pre-die shrink to the smaller more efficient processors) was 54%! I don’t care who you are or what company you run, a 54% failure rate is beyond god awful. Of course, such claims can’t be verified by Redmond themselves as such data is locked away in some secret vault guarded by fire breathing dragons and a mean sea turtle who won’t hold anything back. It’s no secret no matter how much Microsoft wants to deny that the 360 was rushed to market. Soon after release RRoD (Red Rings of Death) issues were popping up left and right. It was so bad if you remember, that Microsoft had to end up spending several billion dollars extending warranties for RRoD victims. So far, my Xbox 360 has had RRoD syndrome twice. Adding insult to injury, Microsoft also managed to snatch up the award for worst customer service and longest service times with replacement/refurbished 360′s taking over a month to return home.
Since undergoing the die shrink which brought smaller, more efficient, less heat radiating processors, the RRoD problems seems to have been greatly diminished. Still, having a product that had a failure rate claimed to be so high is certainly not a consumer confidence builder. By the way, just to compare, the PS3′s failure rate is/was around 11% with the Wii bringing up the rear at a much more dependable 7%. Of course, a percentage point or two could be attributed to the 360′s generally longer playing times. But that’s a huge stretch to say the least and certainly doesn’t account for mountain of trouble that not so long ago plagued the system.
So we all know I’ve been at deaths door twice. Have you see RRoD on your 360? If so is it a return appearance or is it your first?
Source: CrunchGear, Consumerist
