Tips for buying hardware?

[MS]

Speaking of the second warranty service, it was particularly hard to negotiate for, since BIOS scan did not detect any malfunction - while my claim was that the memory card slot had been unresponsive. In the end, they agreed to accept the machine for yet another service and it came out, I was right. It took them to replace the motherboard, as probably it was the most swift solution, without having to dig too much into the problem. The lesson coming from this experience is to manually test the machine in every available direction, since automated scans may simply fail to notice, being brief and overly shallow. Which is also why the less the components altogether, the less the hassle.