Why Extended Warranties are a Scam

Millions of people will head to stores on busiest shopping day of the year. Many of them will return home as victims of a scam. Forget calling the police, they can't do anything about it, as the con you and millions of others have fallen for was perfectly legal. So what is this con job being legally perpetrated against Americans all over the country? Two words: extended warranties.

Extended warranties are undeniably good for two parties: the retailer and the salesman. The retailer gets more money. The salesman gets an extra commission. These are the reasons stores and salesmen push extended warranties for cameras and other electronic devices so much. They want their money first thing, any concern for you probably comes in a distant second. Extended warranties give stores and salesmen money, and consumers a lighter wallet. So why are extended warranties a con job?

Extended warranties are a scam because, chances are, you'll never need them. Manufacturers offer full warranties for their products, provided they're factory sealed and have entered the country of destination via the designated courier. Obviously, gray market and refurbished items don't get a manufacturer's warranty. The lower cost comes at a price. Back onto warranties. The manufacturer's warranty will normally cover any repairs needed because of “normal wear and tear” within a given time frame from the date of purchase. The good news is that things as complex as today's electronics, if faulty, will probably break within a year, if not much sooner. Chances are, if your camera works fine for a year, it will keep right on working for a long time to come.

Besides cost consideration comes what the warranty will and will not cover. Most extended warranties will only cover repairs from “normal wear and tear,” which leaves a lot of room for interpretation. Companies may brag about great customer service, but fixing a product at their own expense costs the repair company money. Because of this, the company may refuse to repair your equipment if, in their eyes, the equipment shows signs of “abuse,” which could be as minor as paint wearing off from regular usage or as major as being waterlogged after being caught in a sudden rainstorm. Unless it is a warranty that specifically covers accidental damage, almost anything can warrant repair service being denied. The warranty company gets your money and you get your broken camera back.

So, when that salesperson offers you an extended warranty, think carefully. Unless the warranty specifically covers accidental damage, skip it. A much more encompassing alternative to an extended warranty is insurance, which should protect against damage and even theft, which no warranty will cover. Check with your home insurance company to see if it is possible to get a rider policy for photo gear attached to the main policy. Having done this myself and knowing other people who have also done so, I can safely say that this is a lot cheaper than any warranty and offers complete protection and piece of mind that warranties don't.


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How to Avoid Buying a Junk Telescope

The year is already winding to a close, which means that Christmas, the time for gift giving, is just around the corner. So, if you're looking to buy a telescope for someone else or yourself, quality should be a prime consideration. So, how can one go about staying clear of the junk telescope blues?

It's easy by following these simple suggestions.

1. The source.
Generally speaking, stores that don't specialize in telescopes/optics are not the best source to buy telescopes, or at least high-quality ones. Yes, while deals are a-plenty in those 'mart' stores, one should avoid the telescopes as the low prices are inherent of low quality. Instead, buy from a specialty optics store. Many camera stores also deal in telescopes, too.

2. The box.
Generally speaking, screaming advertising ploys of “see Pluto” and “600 power” are there to take advantage of consumer ignorance, as are colorful images. First, as a general rule of optics, 1 inch of aperture is good for 50x power so, to get 600x, one would need a 12 inch scope. The pictures? Many people new to astronomy assume that they will be able to see such things through scopes, which is completely untrue.

3. Size matters.
In telescopes, 1 ¼ inch is the standard size for eyepieces. These same scopes, through adapters, can also be made to use 2 inch eyepieces, too. On the other hand, junk telescopes come with .965” inch eyepieces. Besides being similar to looking through peepholes (not easy), the small eyepieces are a red flag announcing that the telescope is junk.

4. Build quality/attention to detail.
If there is a display model telescope set up, look at it. If either the scope or mount has a lot of plastic, skip it. Low build quality denotes junk. Also, if the scope is on a alt.-az. or equatorial mount, if it doesn't come with fine adjustment knobs, looking elsewhere is probably a good idea as high-quality scopes include these very useful items.

5. Computers are costly.
Going to show that technology isn't always good, there are cheap telescope setups with computerization selling for around $250. Avoid these toys at all cost! A good computerized mount along (no scope included) will sell for around $600. When it comes to computer-controlled scopes, this is one case where you always get what you pay for.

5. Name brand does not mean quality.

At one time, the big three of American astronomy, Orion, Celestron, and Meade, were synonymous with quality. Not anymore. Now everyone is selling cheap scopes targeted toward buyers who don't want to pay much. The companies get their money and the ignorant buyers get the shaft, showing the importance of doing your research.

Yes, there are a lot of telescopes and companies selling them but, with a little reading, avoiding the junk scope blues is an easy thing to do.


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Shop Till You Drop Week Smart Buying Advice

Photography and astronomy are expensive so don't get suckered!

It's the unofficial Shop Till You Drop Week as, starting today, stores will be seriously slashing the prices on goods in order to lure in shoppers and kick off the Christmas spending spree season, thus taking over a week formerly devoted to a now oft-forgotten national holiday called Thanksgiving. So, with the pressure on to buy, buy, buy, a voice of reason is needed to counter all of those screaming advertisements and save you a few Benjamins. To that end, below is a series of smart shopping articles designed to help readers avoid needlessly wasting money and expose the tactics merchants and manufacturers use in order to induce people into buying a product or service.


Specific Advice:
How to Avoid Buying a Junk Telescope
Why Extended Warranties are a Scam
Avoiding Camera Sales Gimmicks
The Dark Side to Online Shopping
Black Friday Shopping Advice: Stay Home



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United States Seeks to Protect the Grid, Unveils National Space Weather Strategy and National Space Weather Action Plan

The United States government has just announced the framework for a plan to protect the power grid from a major solar storm. The two documents, officially known as National Space Weather Strategy and National Space Weather Action Plan, detail a 6-part plan details preparations that need to be made in 6 areas to better protect the grid. For people in the know (many people don't even know that solar and space weather exists at all), this comes as belated but welcome news considering that the government's previous strategy was one of keeping its fingers crossed and hoping the run of good luck would continue.

So, why should you care about space weather and the grid?

First up, space weather. For anyone who didn't know that space weather even existed, here's proof that it does in a form that just about everyone has heard about: the aurora, also known as the Northern Lights.

The aurora are caused when the energized particles from the Sun come into contact with Earth's upper atmosphere. When the charged particles hit Earth, they react with the atoms in Earth's upper atmosphere, which become energized themselves and then give off the photons we see as the Northern Lights. Why are the lights different colors? Each individual type of atom gives off a different glow when energized.

Needless to say, no harm can come because of the aurora, which represent a gentle shower on the scale of space weather severity. But what about a solar hurricane? What would one of those look like?

Answer: the Carrington Event.

The year was 1859 and it was during this year that the Earth was subjected to the strongest solar storm ever recorded. Named after Richard Carrington, the astronomer first to discover the storm's origin was a series of sunspots, the storm was so strong that aurora were visible over Hawaii and telegraph lines caught fire around the Sun-facing side of the world. Needless to say, 1859 electronic technology was limited to the telegraph as even the incandescent light bulb was still 2 decades in the future. So, in the case of 1859 electronics vs. the solar superstorm, the storm literally fried the only electronics we had at the time.

In the event of a power blackout today, for ordinary people, having to do without a cell phone, satellite TV, and GPS would be an annoyance. For policymakers, who have finally seen the light in regards to taking action to keep us out of the dark, the real worry is the nation's electrical grid, which flawlessly (most of the time) supplies power to 360+ million Americans every day. Do you take your electricity for granted? Most of us do. Do you ever have to worry about whether that light will come to life when you flip the switch? Probably not. Needless to say, we are lucky to live in a modern nation where such luxuries are seen as necessities and taken as just being part of the way the world works.

As for what could happen if a Carrington-magnitude event hit today, things wouldn't be pretty.

Worst case scenario: transformers, power lines, and capacitors all across the nation get fried, the grid goes down, and power could be out for months, putting us back to a largely preindustrial way of life until the power eventually gets restored. Total cost: up to $2.5 billion on the high range of the estimates.

Next up, our nation's electric supply system, commonly known as 'the grid.'

For all of our wealth and technology, some analysts warn that our power grid is both out-dated and severely lacking in safety measures designed to prevent a rolling blackout. The grid was not built with a master plan, rather it was added to and modified as our appetite for electricity increased, the service area expanded, and technology improved. Result: an electrical hodgepodge of sorts supplying power all across the nation. Why the mix of old and new? Money. It would be simply too expensive for the power companies to update their service areas all at once and the customers? The call center lines would probably be alight with angry customers over any service disruptions (probably only in the hours) brought about by the updating. End result: leave things be and fix them when something goes wrong. It doesn't take an engineer to see that our nation as a whole has been rather neglectful of its power supply system, without which we would be transported over 100 years back into time.

Well, now things may be starting to change.

In the new The White House documents, these specific actions are what are called for: 1) Establish benchmarks showing how commonly severe space-weather events occur; 2) Improve the ability to respond to, and recover from, such events; 3) Reduce or eliminate vulnerabilities to flares and geomagnetic storms; 4) Improve predictions about impacts on critical infrastructure; 5) Improve forecasts of space-weather events, and knowledge of space weather more generally; and 6) Increase international cooperation (because impacts of extreme events will likely be felt across the globe).

Now, while it is good that our leaders are finally starting to take the much overdue task of insulating the grid seriously, one must remember that the White House proposal is just that, a proposal. As with all government spending, any bill authorizing money for fortifying the grid must originate in the House of Representatives.

Hopefully those in Washington DC, the town that can't agree on anything, will come to their senses and set aside the funding to protect the grid, which is something anyone with any common sense would agree is a good idea.

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They're Here! First Close-Ups of Pluto, Moons Make it Back to Earth

After the better part of a day's wait, the first close-up pictures of Pluto and its largest moon, Charon, have finally made it back to Earth, revealing to scientists and the public alike active, dynamic worlds that were anything but what was realistically expected. So, what has New Horizons found?

On Pluto, New Horizons revealed geology that very few scientists had the audacity to expect. Pluto is a member of the Kuiper Belt, which is made up of mostly comets and a few larger bodies, such as Pluto. Comets, at least on the surface, are known qualities, characterized by battered surfaces of mostly ice and some rock. Going into the mission, many expected Pluto to be like a comet, albeit much, much larger.

How were the experts wrong!

The first close-ups of Pluto snapped by New Horizons have revealed a world of mountains (over 10,000 feet tall), valleys, plains, and even what seems to be a polar ice cap. As exciting as these features are, it's the complete absence of craters in some areas that really has scientists talking. Pluto and the rest of the solar system formed roughly 4.5 billion years ago. In the early history of the solar system, there was far more debris flying around than now, most of which was eventually absorbed into the still-forming planets. Evidence for these objects? Just train a pair of moderately-powerful binoculars on the Moon to reveal all of its craters: a 4.5 billion year record of violent impacts. The absence of craters on some areas of Pluto can only mean one thing: the dwarf planet's surface is much newer than the solar system, with many scientists offering a 100 million year age at most, meaning that Pluto was geologically active at some point in its recent (in geological terms) past. The mechanisms that caused this resurfacing will undoubtedly occupy scientists for years, if not decades to come as, unlike geologically active moons in the outer solar system, Pluto has no giant parent planet tugging on it to warm its interior.

Then there's Charon, Pluto's largest Moon.

Like Pluto, Charon displays a wide variety of geological features, evidence of recent geologic activity, and two massive canyons, the larger of which is over 600 miles long and over 6 miles deep. Another feature that is sure to spark investigation is the color contrasts visible on both Pluto and Charon and the possible causes for them.

Needless to say, even with just these first few pictures, mission scientists have already have a lot to talk about and routes of study to pursue. With the data still coming back (NASA estimates it will take 16 months to get all the data captured during the last week back to Earth), who knows what further surprises will await us Earthlings courtesy of the former 9^th planet over 3 billion miles distant.

Stay tuned!

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New Horizons Survives Pluto Flyby, Earth Awaits First Close Encounter Pictures

Late last night, specifically at 8:52pm EDT, anxious mission controllers at NASA finally got the long-awaited radio signal confirming that New Horizons had survived its encounter with Pluto. The radio contact blackout was planned in order for the probe to its science as it passed by the former 9^th planet. For NASA, this was the culmination of a 9-year flight filled with anxiety and danger. 

Traveling 3+ billion miles without mishap is no easy feat. In fact, just the act of getting off the ground is dangerous enough as a rocket launch is really no more than a controlled explosion. Once in space and traveling thousands of miles per hour, even a piece of space debris the size of a grain of rice hitting the probe at the right spot could destroy its ability to function. Those two dangers known, there was another that presented itself well after New Horizons was already into its flight: newly discovered Moons circling Pluto, which served to point out that the Kuiper Belt, in which Pluto resides, is full of potential dangers in the form of space debris.

Needless to say, mission control was holding its collective breath as close approach to Pluto became a matter of days, hours, and finally minutes.

Now, with the probe known to be alive and well, all we have to collectively do is wait for the first close pass pictures to make it back to Earth, which will take some time as not only is Pluto very distant from us, but data transmission rates are only about 2,000 bits (250 bytes) per second. For comparison, dial-up Internet access (remember that?) will transmit about 50 kilobytes per second (or about 200 times faster than the data rate from Pluto) and the slowest broadband Internet service available today is about 2 megabytes per seconds of data (or about 8000 times faster than the data rate from Pluto). End result: if you think your bandwidth stinks, NASA's download rate from Pluto is much, much worse meaning that it will take roughly the next 16 months to transmit all the data New Horizons captured during the past week, so don't expect the mission to drop out of the headlines anytime soon!

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New Horizons Flys by Pluto, Latest Images Most Detailed Yet

NASA's New Horizons Pluto space probe has just completed its historic flyby of Pluto, which was the 9^th planet at the time of launch. While the first pictures at closest approach are not expected until tomorrow, NASA has released images from yesterday, which meant that New Horizons was, at the time, within 1 day of closest approach.

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