This will happens, no matter what.  You will decide and program the
units you would want under service insured or not, and the units would
not only call for service but will also report monthly working
conditions, power consumed, etc.  

More than 15 years ago IBM mainframes 3090 series call by themselves the
IBM service support auto-answer center, report failing components
(customer not even noticed that the computer had an invisible failure). 
The automated service center started a part-number delivery at the same
time it creates an incident report and dispatch a technician to the same
place.  It was not rare to the technician arrives at the customer at the
same time with the part being delivered.  Some he not even knew what was
happening, simply a part replacement job.  Those machines allow
hot-swapping (exchange an electronic card without power off). They lived
happily ever after.  

A computer that not only locate its own failures, but point solutions
and request a new electronics. It only requires a human intervention
because at that time robots evolution was not that sophisticated.  A
machine like that running MVS platform could run for months, even years,
without a single reboot, or... hey Bill..how are ya?... blue screen with
a nasty VDX problem.

Man, I would pay $10/month to receive a monthly report at my email about
my appliances conditions. Wouldn't you love to know that your toaster
power cord is 20¡F above the specified because a probably bad contact at
the power outlet at the wall?...or that you must exchange your a/c
filter during the next 5 days... or that your washing machine is
dangerous because it got a broken ground wire?

Yes, dream on. Where are the flying cars we were promised by 2000? We
got different things instead, as cell phones and dvd's. No one not even
dreamed about it 10 years ago, but we are going to use PC processor
chips running at 7GHz pretty soon. For what? well, how come a machine
would start to think like you (or faster) if we don't give them a
chance? For what? For starters, to not fail in jobs where success is
required, for example, to write (and debug) a new version of Windows.

            "Hey fridge buddy, 
            faster with those beers, 
            we have guests for dinner"

            "ding dong!"

            "hi, we are from your fridge
            maintenance. Its compressor broke and
            it called us. If we replace it now you
            will have plenty of time to cool down
            those beers for tonight, according to
            what the fridge told us..."

            "duh!".


Sean Breheny wrote:
> Yes, that makes sense. However, in the ad, they show a repairman just
> showing up at the door, unannounced, stating that their fridge sent him.
> The homeowners aren't even aware that it is broken. I realize that some of
> this is for dramatic effect, but the idea of it alerting you and the idea
> of alerting the company are two totally different ideas.
[snip]