Prelude

You should buy notebook warranty from the manufacture if your laptop is over $2000.

My previous $3000+ Dell XPS M1710's video card died 2 times within 3 years.
The first one died few months after the 1 year warranty, but was covered by my master card. Then the second one died few months after 2 years.  
Hard drives die too, they are not supposed to last more than 3 years nowadays.

The video card is nvidia's fault actually, but they don't admit it.  They only admit the low end version that has this problem.  But the fact is their high end version 7900m or 7950m GTX has this problem too.

The cost of buying the video card so I can replace it myself is over $600+.   So I gave up on fixing it and bought a new laptop from alienware, which is also dell's.  

So, my suggestion is if your laptop is expensive and do not have the guts and/or technical experience to open up laptops (at least 30 screws and fiercely pull fragile components apart), then you need to buy warranty, at least 3 years.   You will be better off in long run.

Dell warranty is one of the best, btw.