CA warranty on home security products: clever marketing or are they on to something?

CA announced today a warranty to home users of its anti-virus and Internet security suite that would reimburse them for technical support, repairs and hardware replacement up to $1,500.00. There are a couple of obvious limitations however.  It only covers Windows boxes, you cannot log on to a network domain at work and you cannot turn off settings for automatic updates.  My experience is most of these types of warranties are not worth the paper they are written on.  There are so many gotchas and loopholes that it will be next to impossible to ever collect anything and I doubt CA or the company administering it will ever pay out anything.

The question then becomes, is this just a clever marketing ploy on their part or will this give home users a sense of security (no pun intended) that will allow them to pick CA's security offerings over those that may be easier to use with Vista (see my article on Symantec's nightmare below).  I think in order to compete in the home security market companies are going to have to think a bit out of the box like this to stay in the game.  I think over the long run, this program will cost CA peanuts compared to the good press and PR they will receive.  I think this is a much better strategy than running to the EU and throwing themselves at the mercy of the anti-trust regulators. Now if the product is any good, it may actually be worthwhile.