Your Notebook May Fail, Like it or Not
Notebook computers present a special support problem. They are self-contained systems, all-in-one devices, so when something goes south the whole thing is often out of action. A failed laptop is a miserable thing to have on your hands, as it usually means the whole thing goes back to the repair center to get made whole again. Reports that denote the failure rates of notebooks are good to follow, as it makes sense to purchase brands that do better than others. One such report was mentioned by Techblog, and while some of the findings were expected others were surprising.
While many of the laptops I use are evaluation units that only stay around for a short while, I buy a lot of notebooks for myself and the family. We tend to keep them for several years if they hold up, and I have my own impressions for which brands have fared better for us. I have experienced few notebook failures truth be told, with a MacBook Pro being the most problematic. I have used Sony, Compaq, HP and IBM laptops for years without a single problem.
The MacBook Pro problem ended up requiring a warranty replacement of the entire system board. It was an intermittent problem, and thus hard to diagnose. One thing that Apple was smart to realize was that in times of stressful system malfunctions, customers like having a local place to take the system, and talk to a real person who is knowledgeable about the product.
A new report issued by SquareTrade, a company that provides independent warranty for laptops, says that there is a 20 percent chance that a laptop bought today will fail within three years. They base this finding on 30,000 warranty claims, so it has a decent statistical base. It’s important to note that a small percentage of these claims were due to accidental damage, something that can’t be attributed to build quality.
The report demonstrates clearly that you get what you pay for, with netbooks, entry-level notebooks and premium notebooks showing a likelihood for failure within three years of 25, 20 and 18 percent respectively. Build quality does matter in the case of notebooks especially, as they can be handled roughly through traveling and the like.
The most interesting part of the report to me is how individual brands rate for failure. ASUS and Toshiba, two companies said to be in merger talks, are the most reliable brands of notebooks. Gateway and HP were the two showing the highest failure rates. It is important to note that these are projections, not actual failure rates. It should also be noted that not much is separating the four least likely to fail, nor the four most likely.
The complete report can be downloaded here (PDF).
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Huh. My Toshiba was an absolute piece of junk with two HD failures (both of the Hitachi brand). That was in the first two years. I was one catastrophic failure away from a “lemon status” replacement.
My Lenovo X61t, on the other hand oozes quality and has yet to have a single issue… except the pen broke and would get jammed in the slot… but lenovo shipped me a new one delivered within 24hours. That was awesome.
Failures do happen and how a company handles it is crucial to the customer experience. I had a lightning strike fry an HP tablet motherboard and they got me a warranty repair in 36 hours, including shipping two ways. Outstanding.
Where can one find a list of the “local” Apple repair shops?
I must be one very lucky geek or have a rare bullet-proof machine – my 17″ HP zd7000 workhorse lasted close to 5 years. Built like a tank, never a single problem, and still had the original Hitachi hard drive spinning. Although I retired it in August due to heat issues, the machine still powers on and runs fine. I actually had it working for about two hours the other day. At $2200, I’d say I got my money’s worth over those 5 years.
Current workhorse is a Toshiba Qosmio X305-Q708. Quite the upgrade, a little bit more expensive, but from what I have heard Toshiba makes some of the most reliable and dependable notebooks. Many of the business partners I work with deal exclusively with Toshiba notebooks only and will not even touch any other brand.
I don’t see hard drive failures as a reason to knock a notebook manufacturer – those parts can be upgraded/replaced very easily. What I do have problems with are bad screens (backlight bleeding), weak keyboards and issues that require a full system board replacement. Symptoms like those clearly tell me that the manufacturer has not put enough emphasis on quality control.