The world’s leading manufacturer of hard disk drives (HDDs), Seagate, has recently decided to reduce the warranty period of all the products it sells to distributors and computer makers from 5 to 3 years. The Seagate desktop, notebook and consumer electronics drives sold to customers, such as the Seagate Barracuda, will only feature a 3-year warranty. However, certain Seagate products for retail and enterprise consumers will continue to offer a full five year warranty. Previously, all the Seagate products were offering a five year warranty but now only the Seagate enterprise drives and certain Seagate and Maxtor branded retail products will feature a five year warranty.

According to Seagate, “Based on our data, we know that 95% of all returns take place during the first three years, so by offering a 3-year warranty, we can make other aspects of our customer support and warranty programs more attractive with negligible impact to customer product return needs. The 3-year limited warranty on laptop, desktop and consumer electronics bare drives offers new advantages and enhancements to the business proposition for our channel customers while improving cost efficiencies for Seagate We expect little, if any change for consumers – since hard drives used in computer systems other devices are covered by the individual manufacturer’s warranty.”

For the first time Fujitsu Siemens has come up with a unique and exciting offer for its UK customers. The company is offering a chance to get a free Lifebook upgrade every three years. If UK consumers buy a brand new Lifebook between now and April 2009, then they will surely get a replacement Lifebook every three years for life. This is an unprecedented promotional campaign by the company and has been named Lifebook 4 Life.

Apart from the above mentioned scheme there is another offer for UK PC enthusiasts called the Esprimo Promise. According to this scheme the users of the Esprimo range of laptops will benefit by extending the standard warranty period of their machines. If the Fujitsu-Siemens Lifebook laptop breaks within three years of purchase then Fujitsu Siemens will replace it with the new one and will also refund the purchase price.

These two offers are amazingly good and will attract a large number of notebook users. However, to receive the advantages of these two schemes the consumers must fulfill some conditions. First, these schemes are for UK consumers only and the buyers must register their laptops within 21 days of purchase. Second, both the offers are valid till 21 April 2009 only and the customers opting for the Lifebook 4 Life offer have to upgrade the standard warranty of their Lifebook by paying an additional amount of £40. After this if the customer returns the Lifebook in proper working condition after three years he will get a new one from the company.

Tags for this article: laptop, notebook, lifebook