I believe CompUSA offers pretty decent warranties on their machines, at not too high a cost. I don't buy much from them, but went to get a replacement keyboard, and they were trying to sell me a warranty-- said no matter what happened, if i could bring in enough plastic to prove it had once been a keyboard, they would replace it (for two years).
AppleCare itself is a pretty nice program, tho, as i understand it--
pnw