gresch,

I really don't want to get into a back and forth discussion on the merits and demerits of extended repair warranties but there is fairly common thinking that extended warranties may be worth looking at for certain products such as large screen TVs (I have one for my largest plasma) and laptop computers.

As far as laptops go, one needs to figure how long it's going to be useful for one though. I can't speak to Apple's products but if Windows is the selected platform, I think the laptop repairs are only worth considering for about 4 years before it makes more sense to replace them.