I am purchasing a T42, and am considering obtaining Damage/Loss/Theft insurance from http://www.safeware.com . Has anyone had experience with this company? I do NOT have a homeowners policy to put a rider on.

No experience with that company, but...

My experience has been that the type of policy you are considering is outrageously expensive compared to adding a rider to an existing policy (I know, you don't have one). On my homeowners it was only $10 to add my Thinkpad.

It might actully be cheaper to get a low value renter's policy and add a rider to that - and it will cover your other stuff too.

Ed Gibbs

My homeowner's policy has a $1000 deductible so it wasn't really worth adding my computers to it. However, I got a policy on my kids' T4X for $30 each per year - covers everything (theft, accidental damage, immersion, etc).
Try State Farm if you're in the US - you should be able to get a similar deal.

Actually, their coverage rate seems reasonable. $96/year covers a $3K thinkpad against Loss/Theft/ Damage with NO deductable for depreciation (i.e. they replace with a new equivelant machine no matter how old).

When you buy a new Thinkpad, you can add IBM's Thinkpad Protection. 3 years added to my 2373-3VU cost like $159 and it covers any accidental damage (like throwing it off the roof or feeding it gatorade).

Hmmm...does that mean that if I total (or "lose") my ThinkPad just before the Protection expires I'll get a brand new ThinkPad? And if so, will it be the identical model or a comparable current model?

Hmmm...if so, that could present some interesting "upgrade" opportunities for the less than totally scrupulous

IBM protection covers only damage-- not loss or theft. As far as unscrupulous "upgrades", that possibility is there for all insurance.

$96/year sounds like a good deal for anyone who travels a lot or carries around their machine a lot.

One of the problems with Thinkpads is that they all look the same - it is not unusual to see 5 in a row come out of the airport scanner

The chances of either a real or accidental theft at an airport are not insignificant...

I have renter's insurance on my apartment and added a rider for my T30 for like $40/year. Covers loss/theft.

You could always paint the lid a nice bright colour

On my T40p, I had the assest tag put on so it is a big silver label 1"x2" in the bottom left-hand corner. True, it mars the sleek black beauty a little, but I never loose mine in a crowd. I could see putting a smaller label on the cover (possibly over the IBM thinkpad logo in the corner which isn't "rubberized")-- just enough to tell it apart from a distance.

Or you could do racing stripes or a Union Jack!!

I was thinking about a nice big DELL logo - then nobody will take it

I had the black nameplate from an IBM S370/168 mainframe stuck on the front edge of my 760ED. It was a momento of the 1970s when I worked on them. (Historical note: All of 2.7MIPS processing power, 2MB RAM, water cooled, took up maybe 1000 sq ft and cost about $5,000,000.) Then someone stole the notebook. The former was insured and got replaced but the nameplate is gone forever


Which is one reason I don't like standard notebook bags, especialy the ones with the maker's logo. It's so obvious what's in them. Instead I use a notebook sleeve and stick it into a battered old, non-descript briefcase.

Totally irrelavent post - I remember the 370/168 - it was the first IBM mainframe I worked on, and if I remember correctly 'we' were the first to have arrray processors in the UK ... ah the memories - hard drives about 25 inches across with 10 platters - if you forgot to lift off the plastic covers after mounting the new disks, the heads simply drove through the side scraping brittle plastic all over the platters and losing all the data...

Sorry, better now - where were we?