My mom called me up the other day to let me know that her early 2008 15" Macbook Pro (my old computer) wouldn't turn on. The screen was black. Of course, the warranty had run out in April! I pretty much figured out immediately that the crappy (NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT) video card had died like many others have. Luckily, I searched and found out that Apple would fix this problem free of charge for up to 4 years after the computer was purchased. So my mom was able to take it to the Apple store and get it back the next day no questions asked. Phew.
I am a little worried that the same problem will happen again though (since presumably, they use the same video card when they replace the old ones).