Why you should not pay for extended warranty if you use Linux

I have read a rather sad story today. Apparently the Best Buy Geeks squad refused to service the machine of someone who had purchased an $80 extended warranty for its netbook just because he had installed Ubuntu Linux. This story not only shows how best Best Buy's Geeks squad is far from having anything even close to the technical knowledge of a geek, but also raises 2 other questions: are extended warranties worth it, and are Linux consumers correctly protected in the US? Let's dig into these two rather important questions.

Extended warranties for netbooks: are they worth it?

Nowadays many electronics shops such as Best Buy will offer you a 2 or 3 year extended warranty if you pay them a little more money, usually around 20% of the price of the purchased item. In my opinion for a netbook this is not worth the money, especially if you are using Linux. First, the Best Buy accountants can do the maths: if they ask about 20% of the price of the computer for the protection plan this means that the probability of the computer failing between the end of the "free" warranty and the end of the extended warranty is lower than that, meaning that the odds are against you from the start. Second, if you use Linux you are probably knowledgeable enough to fix software issues yourself and are protected from most virus damage, leaving only hardware faults to cover. Now it is very likely that most hardware defects would appear during the legal warranty, so the extended one is not very useful. Finally, if you run the risk of having service denied to you because you use Linux or any piece of software that the store owner does not like it is simply not worth the hassle. If your netbook breaks after the legal warranty, you are probably better to buy a new one anyway. The only case where these extended warranties may make sense is if you purchase an expensive computer that you would have trouble replacing if it failed, or if you don't know anything about computers and expect to go back to the store for every little issue (and I don't know if that is even covered).

Are Linux consumers correctly protected in the US?

What is more worrying to me is the concept that changing your OS to Linux could constitute an unauthorized modification of your computer. This would mean that the manufacturer are selling the software and hardware as "one unit". This is very worrying because if that kind of bundling was accepted the consumers would actually lose the freedom of installing and running the software they like on their own computers. This is very bad because not only would that remove consumer choice from the equation when it comes to software (never a good thing) but it would create a virtual monopoly. If Microsoft and Corel got a deal with Asus to have windows and WinDVD as the only "authorized" software on their computers anybody wanting to buy an Asus computer would have to use that to avoid losing their warranty, even if Linux and PowerDVD are far better. We would go from a situation where the best software is selling to a situation where the cheapest or most common software is selling. If this kind of situation start to emerge it is important that consumer laws are adapted to prevent that kind of bundling like it is in other countries outside of the US. A good example is France where consumer law considers Hardware and software as two different items that can't be bundled and force OEMs to reimburse Windows at the consumer request if it is not possible to purchase a computer "naked". Furthermore the amount of money reimbursed as well as the procedure to follow must be published beforehand (usually the "price list" and reimbursement forms are available on the OEM website). Add to that the fact that in Europe the minimum legal (aka "free") warranty on computers is 2 years and you can see that consumer protection laws in the US are far from being the best in the world, especially for Linux users, and should be revised to protect the consumer better.

Why ChromeOS is a Smartbook OS

Now that Google's Linux based ChromeOS has been fully revealed and is actually available for some machines, one thing appears clearly: ChromeOS is more like a Smartbook OS than a Netbook OS. Let's sum up what ChromeOS is about: it is the Chrome Browser as an operating system. Remember a few years ago when people said that the browser would become the OS? That's what Google did!

Like Smatbooks ChromeOS is all about the web

ChromeOS is designed for one thing: let you surf the web quickly and cheaply. ChromeOS is designed to work with SSDs (and only SSDs) from the start. Since the objective is to get you online fast local storage does not need to be abundant: it needs to be fast and cheap. Nowadays 4 or 8 GBs of fast flash memory will be faster AND cheaper than almost any HDD, so Google choose to impose flash memory. Software-wise ChromeOS is little more than a Linux kernel, X , Clutter and the Chrome Browser, which is probably the fastest route to starting a browser. So thanks to it's minimalistic software stack and focus on local storage speed over capacity ChromeOS gets you online fast on inexpensive hardware. There are however some drawbacks.

Where ChromeOS fails

There is one huge drawback to this approach: if you can't get online, what you can do with the machine is severely limited. Of course the machine is not completely useless when offline: thanks to Google Gears you will still be able to write in Gmail or Google Docs, but that's pretty much it. That's where you see that this was not designed for netbooks, because netbooks are supposed to be able to still perform acceptably when offline, while with ChromeOS offline is an afterthought. Another difference is that a netbooks can run some pretty heavy applications: the GIMP works fine on an Atom processor and playing local video is OK as long as it is not in HD. ChromeOS on the other hand relies on Youtube and lightweight online apps to do pretty much everything, meaning you will not get the same level of functionality as a netbook, even when online.

The future of mobile computing?

ChromeOS is not the future of mobile computing, but a part of it. The way I see it mobile computing is branching in 3 main categories:

- Full laptops: These run mostly Windows (or in some cases Linux or OSX), have powerful processors, DVD drives etc... They only run for about 3 hours on batteries and weight 4 pounds or more but have a lot of local storage and are functional even without an internet connection.

- Netbooks: These run Moblin, Ubuntu netbook remix or Windows starter edition. They are lightweight multi-purpose computing devices that feature an Atom, Neo or CULV processor. battery life is up to 8 hours, local storage in up to 250 GBs. They can still work fairly well when not on the network.

- Smartbooks: These run ChromeOS or Windows CE. They are cheap single putpose devices that have one main function: get you on the web. They very portable and have exceptional battery life, but have little local storage and thus are not very useful when disconnected for long period of time (like when you travel).

The idea behind ChromeOS is really that consumers should have a full laptop or desktop as their main computers and purchase a ChromeOS device as a companion to use when on the road. This is close to the idea of the original EEPC 701. The problem is that in places where mobile bandwidth is still selling at premium prices and access points are rare ChromeOS devices may end up being either very expensive to keep connected or very useless as soon as the user's leave the range of their home's wifi network. Add to that the fact that a lot of online video content (like Hulu) is only available in the US and the usefulness of the machine as a source of multimedia is very compromised when you consider the international market. ChromeOS is a good idea in places where you have the network infrastructure and online media content to support the model. Unfortunately this is not the case in most countries beside the US.