Although PC manufacturers need to provide good repair service during the one year warranty period, they find it greatly to their advantage not to provide a good or affordable repair service after that period. First, they are ill equipped to efficiently service (e.g. swap) parts for old product lines; second, they would far rather you buy a new machine and ditch the old broken one as they make much more that way.

Dell are another good example of this; most machines come with next business day repair service for a year as standard, but try to get something done after the year and your callout fees alone are enough to make you either go to a local repair place or buy a new Dell.

Well, this is pretty-much standard in the U.S. Hardy anyone has local repair facilities, even in the largest cities.

One exception - though you have to pay for it - is IBM. I've gotten excellent service from them on a 4-hour service plan. (They have a service person out within 4 hours of the call.)

(I haven't used this for a few years, though, so I can't say if their service is as excellent now as it was a few years ago.)