Notebook reliability

[Eudoxus]

Very interesting research data about notebook reliability which shows that basically all (or almost all) notebooks are almost equally unreliable due to the fact that all of them use the same parts made by the same vendors. This is called globalisation.
As for me I was surprised that Asus notebooks turn out to be most reliable (yes, even than ThinkPad and MacBooks) and that Acer is just a margin behind Lenovo. No surprises about HP poor performance though.
http://www.electronista.com/articles/09 ... 4th.place/

[ajkula66]

Not for nothing, I wouldn't trust any Square Trade survey as far as I could throw my A31p...

Not to mention the fact that several manufacturers in it were severely affected by the whole nVidia nonsense and are likely to perform better in general...

My $0.02 only...

[Kyocera]

"Three Year Laptop Malfunction Rates" seems like it would be a monumental task to put together the amount of data required to come up with the percentages in that graph. That would cover a lot of area per manufacturer and would said mfr give up that info.

[rkawakami]

Here's some more data to throw on the fire... The annual PC Magazine reader survey of Service and Reliability for laptops/notebooks:

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2352798,00.asp

Click the "View the survey results" link near the top of the article for the data. Lenovo scored average or better than average marks in the survey in all but one category: "all notebooks - percentage needing repairs" (in the last year). My understanding, from participating in previous surveys, is that the magazine solicits input from their readers and uses statistical analysis in deriving the rankings. I would guess that the readership of the magazine is skewed more towards the "knowledgeable" end of computer familiarity, rather than "novice", but that's an assumption on my part.

[mattbiernat]

apple beats lenovo in reliability, that's a new one. i'd suggest dropping apple from 6 feet and dropping a thinkpad.

[Eudoxus]

apple beats lenovo in reliability, that's a new one. i'd suggest dropping apple from 6 feet and dropping a thinkpad.

On the other hand I don't think that dropping test is that crucial if talks about reliability. I assume that in moste cases laptops die not due the fact taht one happens to drop them, but because some piece of hardware just fails.

[mattbiernat]

most people that i know broke their laptops by some kind of physical means such as drop, spill, shaking it too much, etc.
And the reliability test was strictly towards hardware or did it include software and hardware, because in the latter apple is a clear winner. OSX will always be superior over windows to the average Joe.

[Troels]

This comparison has nothing on it in order to conclude that this is due to thinkpads in general. Look at how many notebook models and configurations Lenovo have, which aren't Thinkpads. Consumers (still) don't buy thinkpads due to the lack of glossy screens, fancy shiny colored designs and because of price, even in the US, i'd dare to say.

Does SquareTrade have anything to do with businesses and warranties? According to wikipedia, no. So, yes the survey they made is fine, but only targeted at consumer class notebooks, which means that it is not in HP's professional line (Elitebook?), Panasonic Toughbooks, Dell Latitude or Lenovo Thinkpads - at least very, very few.

[ryan1212]

They must have had a lot of T4x series in their sample with loose BGA GPUs.... either that or all ideapads instead of thinkpads.

[ajkula66]

Troels wrote:

Does SquareTrade have anything to do with businesses and warranties? According to wikipedia, no. So, yes the survey they made is fine,

Really? Have both of us been reading the same article?

In 2004, SquareTrade began a new approach of providing consumers extended warranties for electronics, appliances, computers, and other devices. The company provides a direct to consumer warranty service as an alternative to the extended warranties purchased in retail stores and directly from manufacturers. Warranties are also available for used items, provided they are acquired within 30 days of the purchase of an item. The company’s warranties are also offered to consumers via online retailers.

The quote above is from:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SquareTrade

Sorry, old friend, any company tightly associated with fleabay raises a tremendous amount of suspicion in these old eyes...

[Nigellus]

Consumers (still) don't buy thinkpads due to the lack of glossy screens, fancy shiny colored designs and because of price, even in the US, i'd dare to say.

Really? I'd think that would be a selling point. I dislike glossy screens.

[SafeHarbor]

Some of my younger associates were surprised that my TP's screens are not glossy when they first saw them. I'd say there's a demand for shiny screens (that ThinkPadders don't have).

[Nigellus]

Some of my younger associates were surprised that my TP's screens are not glossy when they first saw them. I'd say there's a demand for shiny screens (that ThinkPadders don't have).

I sincerely hope that Lenovo takes note of that reality. I've also been hearing disturbing rumors about them wanting to make the keyboards more trendy (and therefore no more useful than any other generic laptop).

[mattbiernat]

I've also been hearing disturbing rumors about them wanting to make the keyboards more trendy (and therefore no more useful than any other generic laptop).

hmmm hopefully by that time I will have enough money to buy myself Panasonic toughbooks.

[Navck]

Or you could consider that their data is based off laptops that went through them for repairs, seeing that entities like "Apple Stores" are not going to forward data to them, that would skew the numbers.

But hey, I have a T43 and its four years old now, five by the summer of 2010 and it'll probably have a T410 by its side so it won't be alone.

[pianowizard]

As for me I was surprised that Asus notebooks turn out to be most reliable (yes, even than ThinkPad and MacBooks) and that Acer is just a margin behind Lenovo. No surprises about HP poor performance though.
http://www.electronista.com/articles/09 ... 4th.place/

I found PC Magazine's 2009 laptop reliability survey a while ago but didn't look at it closely until just now. It too ranks Asus well above all other PC laptops. Most brands are clustered very close together, though Sony stands out a little bit. There goes the myth that "Thinkpads are infinitely better than Dells". I still believe they are better, but if you average across all users' experiences, the difference is small.

I am actually quite surprised that HP got the lowest ranking in both surveys, because they are the best-selling laptop brand right now even though they are certainly not the cheapest. I haven't had much personal experience with their laptops. I had an HP nc2400 that I liked very much, but virtually none of their other offerings have interested me and so the nc2400 remains the only HP laptop I've ever owned. During the year or so I had that HP, it was reliable, but it failed several months after I sold it to a coworker! (She did abuse it like mad though.) After seeing that isolated incident, the PCMag survey and this electronista survey, I will need to think twice before buying another HP laptop.

On the other hand, I thikn I should start looking into Asus laptops. The PCMag survey pointed out one caveat though: the Asus score was based on a very small sample size. It will be interesting to see whether Asus' impressive scores will hold up in the next few years.

[j-dawg]

Everyone I know with an HP notebook has eventually had it break.

My sister's Lenovo 3000 N100 (ca. 2006) just lost its backlight. Though this is literally a ten-dollar part, for an average user the price will swell into the triple digits with installation.

My own tablet had to be sent in recently for minor service - the system kept getting too hot. Kudos to the service folks for turning it around quickly; I hardly noticed it was gone by the time I had it back. But despite the speed and quality of service, I still had to send the computer in.

To be fair, I am more picky and observant about my computer than most users, and tend to have a CPU temperature display up on the screen at all times, so maybe most people wouldn't have sent it in. Certainly most Apple customers don't seem to notice that their Macbooks are sperm-slaughtering heat monsters...

[asiafish]

Everyone I know with an HP notebook has eventually had it break.

My sister's Lenovo 3000 N100 (ca. 2006) just lost its backlight. Though this is literally a ten-dollar part, for an average user the price will swell into the triple digits with installation.

My own tablet had to be sent in recently for minor service - the system kept getting too hot. Kudos to the service folks for turning it around quickly; I hardly noticed it was gone by the time I had it back. But despite the speed and quality of service, I still had to send the computer in.

To be fair, I am more picky and observant about my computer than most users, and tend to have a CPU temperature display up on the screen at all times, so maybe most people wouldn't have sent it in. Certainly most Apple customers don't seem to notice that their Macbooks are sperm-slaughtering heat monsters...

Really? My MacBook Pro runs cooler than my ThinkPad T400, which itself ran rather cool.

[j-dawg]

To be fair, I haven't used the old Pros and the new aluminum Macbooks. But the old plastic ones I've interacted with have all run pretty hot.