My experience in buying a new laptop a couple of weeks ago is an example of why you should not trust a salesman when he or she tries to sell you the “extras”.I had made a decision while on holiday in Canada to buy an HP Pavilion dv9303 from the Best Buy store in Newmarket, Ontario. Once I made the decision, the salesman looking after me called his manager over, who immediately started giving me the spiel.

“Do you want to purchase any additional insurance?” he asked.

I found out from him it would add up to about C$250, giving me an extended parts and labour warranty. I told him I lived in France and that it would be useless to me. From my experience I also knew that the insurance was a way of making a hefty additional profit for the store.

“The HP warranty is good enough for me,” I said.

Still the manager continued trying to sell me the “extra”. “The HP warranty is void once you leave the country. As you may know one-third of laptops fail within the first year.” The part about the warranty is untrue. Laptops are made for travelling. HP will fix your machine anywhere there is an HP service centre, which essentially means the warranty covers a lot of places, including Bermuda. Or he may have been trying to say the store warranty would be void, which first of all would be strange as anyone buying a semi-high end machine like mine would probably be travelling with it as well.

Secondly, if his statement were true then he should not have been trying to sell me an extension to a warranty that would be void anyway! Once I had nixed that idea, the manager and the salesperson then asked me if I wanted Best Buy to “prepare” my computer for use. Said service would cost C$150.

“We make recovery discs for you and clean up the registry,” he said when I asked what the sum would cover.

“But as soon as I turn on the machine I will be asked if I want to make recovery discs,” I said.

“Not under Vista,” he said, refering to the newest Microsoft operating system that replaces Windows XP.

“We can make them for you.” Again, he was being quite dissembling. While it is true that Vista does not prompt a user automatically to make recovery discs, you do have that option. It is the first task everyone should do once they have fired up a new computer. In fact once I opened the HP packaging for my new laptop at home I found a separate instruction sheet on how to make the recovery discs. These will put your machine back to its original state in case of problems, such as a virus attack.

Have at least two blank DVDs or 11 CDs handy to make the recovery discs. Vista also has a back-up recovery program that will do the same thing, but making the recovery discs will ensure you can at least boot up the machine in the first place.

However back to the Best Buy store sales job. Even though I had rejected both offers to pay more into the store’s coffers for unwanted warranty extension and “service”, the two persisted, probably seeing their cut fade away. As the bill was being rung up the salesman turned to me and pointed to the insurance sum, which was still on the display.

“So you are sure you don’t want this?”

“I’m sure.” Only then did he delete the charge from my bill.

This kind of behaviour is disappointing from a large store like Best Buy. I would think if they were going to offer an extra warranty then they should at least show me the terms, especially since the cost was quite high. The real problem was that one of their managers was really trying to get someone he thought had little computer knowledge to shell out up to C$400 (if I had bought the insurance and the service) through misleading statements.

It is a warning lesson for all those who go out to spend some money on a laptop. Know what you are buying and why. If you do get an extended warranty, make sure you read the terms and the fine print. You may find lots of what they are giving are already covered by the manufacturer’s warranty.

Here’s a question. Can anyone who has bought an extended warranty for a computer let me know what happened subsequently? Did you have a good or bad experience? Share your thoughts for the benefit of other readers.

On a related note, my snazzy new laptop uses Vista Ultimate, supposedly the most complete form of the Windows operating system in existence. Vista comes in six separate flavours, three of them intended for home users, two for businesses and one for emerging markets.

Home Basic and Home Premium give regular users a choice. Business is for small firms, while Vista Enterprise is for the larger brethren. Ultimate is for the multimedia user. Vista Starter is exclusively available in the poorer countries of the world.

What mainly sets Ultimate apart from the others is the inclusion of BitLocker, a hard drive encryption program. BitLocker automatically sets up a system to prevent thieves from accessing the data on a stolen laptop, protecting a company from having sensitive information revealed on the street.

If you do shell out for the new system then ensure you choose what version you want. You will also know what you are buying if you get it pre-installed on your new computer. Go to www.microsoft.com for information on the different versions. Of course, be aware that many of your programs have not upgraded to work with Vista. Real Player, for one, has not yet issued a Vista version of its media player.

Vista was released to the general market this year by Microsoft as the successor operating system to Windows XP, which Microsoft will no longer make available to manufacturers beginning next year.

Microsoft is of course attempting to kick more people into shelling out even more for what is essentially an upgrade. Vista is really great looking and is a breeze to use.

However the business world is really hesitant to shell out more for yet another itieration of Windows, just when they got all their systems operating smoothly under XP after making the transition from Windows 2000.

A poll by US market research firm Harris Interactive also found that only 10 percent of home users questioned were planning to upgrade to Vista in the near future. Microsoft said it will continue to support Windows XP for “some considerable time”.

Those using the Macintosh OS from Apple were in for a disappointment last week. Apple has announced that is delaying the release of the new version of its operating system by up to four months.

Apple had previously said it would ship the system in Spring. The company cited “quality control” as the reason behind the delay. Apple’s current operating system is called Tiger. The new operating system will be called Leopard.

In a statement, Apple said it had also shifted programmers from developing Leopard over to the iPhone, which is due to go to market in late June.

If you have any comments contact Ahmed at elamin.ahmed@gmail.com.