Lenovo Offers Oops Insurance

Lenovo pushed out a pile of new laptops today for consumers and businesses that aren't behemoths, but the bigger news might be a package of warranty and support that they're targeting for small-to-medium-sized businesses (SMBs), coincidentally the kind of business that I target in this blog.

The ThinkPlus Secure Business suite combines next-business-day warranty service, protection against equipment damage from accidents (the flight attendant pouring water on your laptop, for instance), and an Internet-based backup system.

There are some hundreds of thousands of SMBs in the U.S. that have little or no dedicated information technology staff, and Lenovo may want to crack this nut and get a host of new, dedicated customers who can rely on a set of services that they don't have to think about.

You can purchase accident insurance that covers cracked laptop screens, find your own online backup system (or build one in-house), and pay separately for faster warranty response, of course. And Lenovo isn't disclosing the pricing here, as it's a package that's likely to vary among any two businesses.

Nonetheless, reducing the management burden and opportunity costs of unexpected hardware replacements or periods without necessary data or laptops should be worth quite a lot.