According to the June 2008 issue of Consumer Reports, and accounting for the negation of three percentage points as outlined in the magazine, one in five laptops purchased between 2003 and 2007 have needed repairs or “had a serious problem.” Does this seem crazy to anyone other than me? That’s 20% guys and gals! This seems high to me. I could live with one in seven, or better yet one in ten but one our of every five? While the highest percentage went to Apple with 23% they also won the pole position in the category of customer support according to the same issue. The bottom line is this: if you buy a laptop there is a fairly good chance you are going to run into some problems with the hardware regardless of the brand. Perhaps we need to make our choice based on who handles those problems best, and what software the computer is running? It would be nice not to have to place those limitations on ourselves, but this is the technology world we live in.
Lenovo (IBM): 20%
Compaq: 20%
Sony: 21%
Toshiba: 21%
Dell: 22%
HP: 22%
Gateway: 22%
Apple: 23%
Data are based on 75,576 responses…to our annual Product Reliability Survey, conducted by the Consumer Reports National Research Center. Data have been adjusted to eliminate differences solely linked to the age and the usage of the product.
But what was the nature of the repair?
Comment by Anthony Martin — August 3, 2008 @ 9:14 pm
That level of detail is not given, but it is hardware related, and it is all but a universally consistent rate of failure. The same article also shows that when it comes to desktop computers Apple is far and away less likely to need repairs at 12% than its closet competitor, Compaq at 17%.
Comment by Aaron Jackson — August 4, 2008 @ 1:32 am
Hardware could include things like dropping it on the floor or tripping on the power cable. Both of these have been mitigated by design innovations on the Apple design.
Comment by Anthony Martin — August 4, 2008 @ 10:41 am
Yes, I am a fan-boy.
Comment by Anthony Martin — August 4, 2008 @ 10:42 am
I don’t see those improvements dropping Apple’s repair rate any lower than the other brands listed (given a +/- or 3%, but I could be wrong. I think the moral of the story is that laptop hardware has a fairly high failure rate regardless of which brand you buy, and your decision on which computer to buy should not be based on this factor (especially considering how closely the repair rates match for each manufacturer). If you want a more detailed study specific to MacBook/MacBook Pro models visit Macintouch’s MacBook/MacBook Pro Initial Reliability Report
Comment by Aaron Jackson — August 4, 2008 @ 11:00 am