[Jason Dunn]

http://www.kingston.com/press/2004/digitalmedia/08a.asp

"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. ;-)

[Jason Dunn]

http://www.kingston.com/press/2004/digitalmedia/08a.asp

"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. ;-)

[Suhit Gupta]

I just looked up the packaging of all my old CF cards (SimpleTech and Crucial) and they both already offered Lifetime Warranty on these cards, at least the ones I own. So it is about time that Kingston go on board. Of course, these suckers survive a long time in any case so it is not like this is going to be a big problem for Kingston.

Suhit

[Jason Kravitz]

I think my Viking CF card that I bought cheap on Amazon offered a similar warranty although when the card stopped working and I went through the trouble of requesting an RMA and mailing the card off to Viking I got nothing back - no emails, no letters saying thanks for the card etc nothing.

In their defense, I never did follow up on it so it probaby would have been best to check on it and I sent it USPS so I don't know if it actually got there. Regardless, I switched to SanDisk and Lexar and have been happy so far (no support contact yet though)