Digital Home Thoughts: Kingston Offers Lifetime Warranty on most Flash Memory Cards

"Kingston Technology Company, Inc.,the worldwide independent leader in memory products, recently instituted a lifetime warranty policy on most of its digital media products*. According to the new lifetime warranty, if any of Kingston's Compact Flash, MultiMediaCard, Secure Digital or Smart Media products fails at any time, and the failure is caused by a defect in material or workmanship, Kingston will either repair or replace the product. Until now, the standard warranty on such products was five years."

The technology industry has been known lately for reducing warranties in the never-ending cycle to increase profits for shareholders, regardless of the cost to consumers or the reputation of the company involved. I recently had a 120 GB Maxtor external Firewire hard drive go bad on me, and much to my dismay the warranty was only a year instead of the three years I was used to with older drives. So I greet this news from Kingston warmly - it's nice to see companies standing behind their products. Of course, the realistic side of me knows that they're doing this because Flash memory is so tough, and they're not going to lose money offering a lifetime warranty, but I'll take any longer warranty I can get. ;-)