[SunRescue] Spoiled and Isurance and stuff

[Jonathan Katz]

One of the resident Steves wrote:

:I think if we added up the list prices of all the equipment we have laying
:around our respective places, we might be shocked at the total- it's not
:just the CPU's, but all the other things like the extra memory, upgraded
:graphics, bigger disks, tape drives, networking infrastructure, etc.- things
:that were correspondingly expensive at the time. Pretty soon you're talking
:real money! <grin>

Lest we forget the one priceless commodity (time) that we've invested to make
all this gear work.

This is actually an important thing to think about-- most homeowners/renters
insurance policies insure things at 'replacement value' which (depending
on how your contract is written) could mean the initial list price. God
forbid your house were to burn down, but that SS2 you picked up at the MIT
flea market for $20 originally cost $14,000 and the way your insurance works
it could pay a good chunk of that. For an extra $5-$10/yr you can get a 
policy which will give up you to $50k carte-blanche on-top of your existing
policy to spend on replacement gear. Just save your receipts and original
price lists.

I talked through the implications of fraud and the like with the agent-guy
who hooked me up after I bought my swingin' bachelor pad. It works like
this-- whatever was a reasonable market price when you bought the gear
is what it is insured for.... even our computer gear that depreciates like
no tomorrow. 

We took the example of my SGI Indy since that's what I had at the time. I 
pieced it together from eBay and Mashek and reputable.com. Buying the box 
configured from Mashek or any of the comp.sys.sgi guys at the time would 
have cost $2700 or so. I pieced it together for $1500-ish. Since its value 
when I acquired it is $2700 I'd get $2700 to replace it if my swingin' 
bachelor pad were to burn down.  These days that $2700 would get me a pretty 
fly Octane or O2 or something (I'd probably spend it on a fully configured 
U1000 w/ my employee discount or something, but *shrug*.)

The same thing goes for all your Hi-Fi stereo gear, furnature, etc.

-Jon
-- 
Jonathan Katz
e-mail: jon at jonworld.com 
website: http://jonworld.com
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