How Reliable is your Notebook / Laptop?

SquareTrade, a third-party company selling extended warranties for laptops and netbooks, have recently completed a survey of some 30,000 such device owners, with a view to finding out which manufacturer / product category is the most reliable. Unfortunately, the piece does not define a “fault” or its severity, so much of these numbers are open to interpretation. Additionally, the overall figures include those calls which were found to be accidental damage rather than a manufacturing defect, but since this is presumably similar across manufacturers (unless we believe that Apple owners are demonstrably “more careful” than Dell owners?), we’ll discount it. So, on to the numbers then. The numbers are basically the percentage of laptops / netbooks from that manufacturer, that will exhibit some fault within 3 years:-
1. ASUS 15.6%
2. Toshiba 15.7%
3. Sony 16.8%
4. Apple 17.4%
5. Dell 18.3%
6. Lenovo 21.5%
7. Acer 23.3%
8. Gateway 23.5%
9. HP 25.6%
With only 2.7% separating ASUS and Dell, the top five placings are a close contest. The last four, though, have a wider margin, with HP being some 7.3% adrift of middle-placed Dell.
To be fair to all, Laptops and Netbooks have a hard life, being tossed in the back of cars, left on trains (if you work for the council) and generally suffer more physical bumps and scrapes than their desktop equivalents. Given this, I don’t think the numbers are too bad but bear in mind the cast-iron mantra uttered by every IT professional the world over; BACK UP YOUR DATA!