The following is a re-enactment of the mysterious and sudden failure of Megan Lavey's MacBook.

It was the evening of Tuesday, July 14, 2009. Megan Lavey heads out to the movies to watch the eagerly anticipated Harry Potter and Half-Blood Prince. But the excitement of the night was short lived.

Upon her arrival home, Megan found her MacBook in an unconscious state. She tried several attempts to revive it: plugging it and unplugging it, removing and reinserting the battery, as well as performing an SMC reset. However, these attempts proved futile.

In a last ditch effort, Megan made an emergency visit to her local Apple store to meet with a genius. They had both good news and bad news. The good news was that they identified the problem with her MacBook (the logic board) and could save it, but -- and here comes the bad news -- could cost up $750 to repair. What's worse, Megan didn't have AppleCare coverage. In a state of shock and sadness, Megan leaned on the shoulders of her fellow TUAWers, each of whom offered words of encouragement her:

Chris Rawson: "My wife's mid-2007 MacBook is having the exact same issue right now. Luckily, it's covered by AppleCare, and going to the local repair place ASAP."

Erica Sadun: "":( :( :(""

Sang Tang: "Hey, this would make an interesting post. I'm going to write something on this."

There are many Megans in the world, and each is faced with the difficult task of deciding whether or not a repair is worth its cost. It's also times like these that one regrets not purchasing AppleCare, for often times repair costs outweigh the cost of AppleCare. And this raises the question. Should you purchase AppleCare? Several months back, TUAW's Robert Palmer penned a piece on why he believes AppleCare is worth it. This post expands upon that and provides examples of when AppleCare is and isn't justified.

A lot of days the iPhone is a big help in getting us through our lives, but it's not everyday an iPhone saves one of our readers from a world of County Sheriff hurt.

TUAW reader Paul tells us he was driving on a Midwestern road covered with blowing snow. He slowed down for a car stopped on the side of the road, but the car behind him hit his rear bumper, doing damage to both cars.

The officer who arrived to investigate asked Paul for his insurance card. Of course, that was when Paul realized it had expired the month before, and he didn't have the latest card in his wallet. The officer said it would be $200 for not being able to prove insurance coverage, and since Paul didn't have the cash it meant putting his license up for bond.

While the officer was doing the paperwork, Paul used his iPhone to log into his Geico Insurance account via the web. He was able to request a PDF copy of his card, which was emailed to his iPhone; then he displayed it to the officer. Happily, the deputy accepted the card as proof of insurance and did not issue the citation.

I expect most police agencies wouldn't be so open to the idea of looking at a downloaded document, but in this case, at least, it is yet another reason to love the iPhone.

Thanks Paul!

Since I've owned a variety of regular mobile phones and smartphones over the last couple of years, I wasn't surprised to see fine print during the iPhone activation process which warns users that AT&T won't offer their insurance policy on Apple's darling new gadget. I've been on nearly every major mobile phone network in the US - Cingular, T-Mobile (and VoiceStream), Verizon and Sprint - and not one of them covered smartphones with their policies. In fact, if you were upgrading an existing AT&T account and swapping out your old phone that had an AT&T insurance policy on it, you too were warned that the policy would be automatically removed from your account. Gee, you'd think these companies don't trust us with small, easy-to-drop expensive electronics. Who knew?

To help remedy this lack of a contingency plan for the iPhone, I decided to call a few insurance companies in the Colorado area to see if they could cover it. What many people might not know is that these companies typically cover electronics like mobile phones and even notebook computers, often at prices far cheaper than extended warranty plans from manufacturers and retail stores. While I'm not entirely familiar with how fast actin' or comprehensive this kind of coverage is from every provider, I do know that mine - State Farm - will cover both hardware failure and accidental damage (though accidental damage will cause my premiums to increase, while an incident like theft will not).

Back to getting coverage for your shiny new phone, however, the summarized rundown I got from calling three of the big general insurance providers (Allstate, Geico and State Farm) is that attaching a clause to a renter or homeowner insurance policy specifically for covering an iPhone would add only $5-20/year to a policy. Keep in mind these were estimates based on a $600 iPhone, and it appears that you can't simply ask these guys to insure a phone; you need to have some kind of a primary policy with them first, then attach this specific clause. Surprisingly, every representative I spoke with knew exactly what an iPhone was, and a couple of them asked me whether I was happy with mine.

As far as coverage through companies like specialized electronics or computer insurance providers is concerned, I had a much harder time finding anything substantial. Most of the companies I spoke with didn't have policies in place, and only Safeware confirmed that they were "seriously considering" introducing iPhone coverage. They do, however, cover other smartphones, and a quote for a BlackBerry Curve (a $400 smartphone) was $65 for a year, covering accidental damage, loss and theft. A downside, however, is that repairs for damage have a turnaround time of 7-10 days, with no loaner options available. If being without a phone is a primary concern, the loner option included in AppleCare for iPhone might be a good 'plan b' to consider in combination with one of these insurance policies.

Ultimately it's a good thing to at least have insurance options in addition to AppleCare, since Apple doesn't cover any sort of accidental damage. Since insuring an iPhone through one of the larger companies seems to be so cheap, it's basically a no-brainer to pick up at least some kind of a policy. If y'all have other ideas or options for insuring your shiny new iPhone, please enlighten the rest of the class with a comment.