Study reveals laptop brand reliability

avantra · 25 November 2009 at 11:57AM

Found this on the BitTech web site and kind of confirm what I felt for a long time when I was the IT lead for a medium company here in the South West. We switched from Dell and HP to Toshiba as we found their home user brand better than the Biz grade machines from Dell.

The results of a new study published this week reveal that while Apple's laptops might fetch a price premium, that doesn't necessarily equate to a more reliable system. I have no vested interest in any particular brand I just like to have them doing the job without braking all the time

The study, carried out by SquareTrade and reported over at InfoWorld, reveals that while Apple's range of MacBook and MacBook Pro laptops are certainly reliable enough, they only make it to fourth place overall.

In the 30,000 laptops which were part of the study of failure rates requiring after-sales warranty service, Apple was beaten in reliability by Toshiba and Sony. Further, Asus managed to pip everyone to the post, coming in at the lowest failure rate of all - just 15.6 percent of Asus machines required warranty repairs over a three-year period.

michaelro · 25 November 2009 at 12:20PM

Unless I missed it, the survey doesn't quote how many of each brand were tested.

Unless those figures are roughly the same, the study and it's results are flawed.

Patrick20 · 25 November 2009 at 12:42PM

Not to mention Dell do extended warranties so provided you don't have an acident they should cover any failures. I got a 4 year warranty for £20. Worth thinking about

TEDDYRUKSPIN · 25 November 2009 at 12:57PM

How long do you actually want the computer to last? Constant useage of a computer will give the computer reliability of 7 years roughly. By then, the computer will be useless and just another brick.

Harddrives tend to start to go noisy and tend to break down by the 7th year anyway. By the 7th year, you would have gone through at least two new operating systems.

Reliability or not. Technology will outpace the warranty.

avantra · 25 November 2009 at 1:06PM

michaelro wrote: »

Unless I missed it, the survey doesn't quote how many of each brand were tested.

Unless those figures are roughly the same, the study and it's results are flawed.

From page 6: 'Our study data includes 9 brands with a minimum of 1000 units'

michaelro · 25 November 2009 at 1:26PM

avantra wrote: »

From page 6: 'Our study data includes 9 brands with a minimum of 1000 units'

But they tested 30,000 Laptops?

So say for example Brands 1-8 have 1000 Units and 1 has the remaining 22,000, is it accurate to compare failure rates between them?

cyberbob · 25 November 2009 at 1:51PM

These studies are never very accurate. I am at the moment typing on a 10 year old Apple powerbook Pismo. It doesn't mean that all Pismos were this reliable, but a few figures like this can skew any statitstics

Leopard · 25 November 2009 at 1:59PM

It doesn't reveal the nature of the actual faults.

I'd bet that the majority of them, certainly for Apple, arise from the notorious nVidia 9600 M GT defective graphic chips disaster – a massive time-bomb that afflicted several of the manufacturers mentioned and will be ticking away in the laptops of thousands of MSE members, if it hasn't manifested itself already. nVidia used the wrong solder for the underfill on the die in them – they will all fail prematurely, sooner or later, rendering the laptop unusable and in need of expensive repair.

One of my own brace of June 2007 "Santa Rosa" MacBooks Pro suffered this failure last April, when 22 months old, and the other one surely will, too. Both of mine have 3-year AppleCare warranty and Apple replaced the motherboard free of charge. Even so, you don't get a "loaner" while it's being done (mine took about a week, including sourcing the part) which is an example of why I need two.

Apple, to its credit, launched its own investigation into the problem when nVidia denied the fault existed, in the autumn of last year, and then sued nVidia. nVidia was forced to a file a Form 8-K with the Securities & Exchange Commission, admitting it and making a $150m to $200m charge to its accounts.

Unlike most of the other manufacturers mentioned, Apple has issued a free extended warranty, up to three years (so far), for this part on all MacBooks Pro which suffer the failure, irrespective of whether or not the customer has AppleCare extended warranty. What will happen come June 2010, when that expires on the first Macs containing the part, remains to be seen but in Britain this may be given a further extension because of the six-year-rule under the Sale of Goods Act for a known and established common fault.

Other manufacturers have taken a harder line once the initial one-year warranty expires, as many on MSE can attest. The most recent thread about it here involved the intransigence of Hewlett-Packard.

If your laptop has an nVidia 8600M GT graphics card and you need (or expect to need, sometime in the future) to make your own claim under the Sale of Goods Act you would be wise to download, archive and print out the Form 8-K filed by nVidia and be ready to confront the laptop's manufacturer with it.

What the article does show, in general, is the wisdom of taking out three-year warranty, certainly on an expensive laptop, if it's available from the manufacturer. Some have questioned my advice to buy AppleCare but I've always done it on my Apple laptops and shall continue to do so and advise so.

Fifer · 25 November 2009 at 4:58PM

cyberbob wrote: »

These studies are never very accurate. I am at the moment typing on a 10 year old Apple powerbook Pismo. It doesn't mean that all Pismos were this reliable, but a few figures like this can skew any statitstics

I'd expect a minimum sample size of 1000 to be a reasonable reflection and to smooth out the effect of any unrepresentative outliers.

Marty_J · 25 November 2009 at 5:29PM

This study raises more questions than it answers unfortunately.

For instance, it shows that premium laptops are more reliable than entry-level laptops. But (unless I'm missing something), it fails to note the price ranges of the laptops included in the study, other than to say they cost more than $400. Given that all of Apple's laptops are premium models, and all the other manufacturers have a wide range of models, it's necessary to know what price ranges are being looked at. I have a feeling that someone who looks at this and thinks a £300 Toshiba laptop is going to last longer than a MacBook Pro may very well be disappointed.

John_Gray · 25 November 2009 at 5:36PM

And another 'study' indicates that netbooks are 20% more likely to fail over their first year than laptops!

Study reveals laptop brand reliability

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