should I buy 3-year service plan?

As some of you know, I'm taking the plunge from PC world to Mac world. "Finally!", as my Adobe-totin' brother smirked. We shall see. Anyway, I'll probably go with a 17" MacBook Pro. I've been buying electronica for 30 years and have always refused "extended plans" and have not once regretted it. However, I know nothing about Macs except that every musician I know who has a nice home studio or project studio has a Mac, not a PC, under (or lately on top of) the desk. So I'll bite the bullet and give it a try.
What do you ladies and gents think - extend the plan or no? Anyone said "no" and regretted it...or vice versa?
Thanks for your time,
Rudi
ps - would your answer be different whether the Pro was a desktop or a laptop?

I've just gone over the year mark with my MBP and I've only ever needed to call the AppleCare center once or twice, back when I was just getting set up. No problems since then, so I didn't extend it, but I do have a Best Buy plan on it since they cover for theft (which AppleCare doesn't). Since theft is more of a concern with laptops, I opted for that plan.

I would just wait and see how it goes. You don't have to get extended coverage right away. You can extend it any time during the first year.

I've never had any major problems but you never know. I will say that I expect my MBP to be at least as tough as my old PC which never once needed to be repaired.

Try searching this forum for the topic. There have been at least three other posts on this same question in the last month. Lots of good replies there already.

Hardware "is" going to fail. Whether it's during the time frame of any warranty or after??? Who's making money on those extended warranties - the customer or the company selling them?

The only way you can regret not having purchased an extended warranty of any kind is to consider how much money you would have spent on "all" of those warranties over 30 years vs the times you (would) have used them. Certainly you can't regret it based on an instance of failure from one item.

I get AppleCare on any Apple product I buy. Why? It's saved me over $6,000 in repair costs and gotten me a brand new computer when they couldn't fix mine.