Laptop reliability

[Hi Ho]

http://www.engadget.com/2009/11/17/l...-win-hp-fails/

There is a disclaimer in case you didn't click on the "Read" link. This study was done by an extended warranty company. However, I don't see how that would influence the differences between brands. All the details are in the PDF on THIS page. It looks to be pretty much in line with what I thought. I have always heard of issues with HP laptops. I have had no issues with my Toshiba laptop. We have several old Toshibas at work from 2003 that has taken a beating every day being out in the field and they still work just fine.

Laptop failure rates are much higher than most other consumer electronic devices. I'm guessing much of that is due to the fact that they get banged around a lot more?

[Force Flow]

A lot of the failures I've seen have to do with motherboards and/or graphics, with HDDs a close second. The drives I could see as being subject to abuse, but the motherboard/graphics failures seem like they're more attributed to defects than abuse. Course, there's also the overheating of components due to dust accumulation, so that may factor into some of the motherboard/graphics failures.

[glc]

Toshibas do not seem to be as reliable as they used to be.

[thefultonhow]

The graph says that Toshibas are the most reliable, though. I would believe it -- I've seen far fewer Toshiba turds recently than I did several years back. (In contrast, I see just as many HP turds. )

[Masaki 7-11]

My college has been using Toshiba exclusively for the last few years and for the most part the laptops were disappointing. The performance wasn't up to what was expected for the hardware; a lot of the laptops (new and on flat, solid surfaces) would overheat and BSOD even though they were quite thick and had large heatsinks. Laptops that I've worked on that had OEM installed software (shovelware) were quite unreliable and slow (and HP/Compaq probably has the most shovelware included with the installation); getting rid of the shovelware has made the laptops I've worked on run reliably and fast. All the HP/Compaq (and other brands of) laptops I've cleaned (software wise) right after being bought work well (reliably and fast), and there are some laptops that I've cleaned that are still going strong after 5+ years (the other ones are also going strong but being newer they haven't been used as long).

[glc]

The least amount of shovelware I've seen recently has been on Dell business-class laptops (Latitude, Vostro). The Vostros have been average on reliability but the new Latitudes appear to be very solid so far. Dell's business-class support is also quite good.

[thefultonhow]

Yeah, my Latitude E6400 has been pretty rock-solid, although I think I do have occasional overheating problems when docked and doing CPU-intensive work.