I think that $400+ for a 5-year extended warranty would not be a good investment. My best guess is that the average user keeps his/her new system for only 2-2.5 years nowadaze. Is your friend different? What's the Sony warranty? 1 year? 2 years?? I would test the system extensively as suggested by other respondents. If the solid-state stuff (everything but disk drives) doesn't fail in a year it'll likely last the life of the computer easily. If, say, the hard drive fails, there would be no warranty on the lost data anyway. Replacing a diskette or CD drive shouldn't be a big deal. Hope this helps a bit ... David ********************************************************************** ** David Nasser ** [log in to unmask] ** ** Univ. Mo. St. Louis ** ** **********************************************************************; "Mother died and left me reckless, daddy died and left me wild, wild, wild. No, I'm not good looking, but I'm some sweet woman's angel chile'." from "Statesboro Blues", Blind Willy McTell, maybe 1928. PCBUILD maintains many useful files for download on our web site - visit our download page at: http://nospin.com/pc/files.html