Rescuecom PC Reliability: Apple, Asus, Lenovo

this is exactly why i tell people looking for a solid windows based laptop to buy an Asus or Lenovo. Acer used to be really good until they bought out Emachines. since then, the entire product line has had a big drop in reliability.

didnt he already post this a few months ago?

Are they certain this doesn't just reflect the intelligence of the consumer in their choice to call or not to call a service as stupid sounding as "1.800.rescue.PC" ? SELECTION BIAS.

Why would I call a third-party number if my laptop got problem within warranty?

as someone who worked for a local PC shop for a while I can confirm that the most troubled brand was HP with thoshiba a close seccond. We hardly ever saw an Asus PC and only one person every brought a mac in and all he wanted was for us to backup his data.

Some people depend on their PC to run their business, and can't wait for the manufacturer to recieve their PC via shipment, and then wait for it to come back up to 2 weeks later.

And I agree with akoegle, the two brands I seem to fix the most are HP/Compaq and Dell.

Why would an Apple user ring a 'Rescue - PC' line? They'd have to be completely clueless... ... ...

Yes the article does make mention of this, but it seriously questions the intention of the article.

It'd be like Toyota quoting it's impeccable reliability by how many calls were made to Ford's service department (in my part of the world, anyone can service anything... so it's a fairly valid comparison).

I can attest to this, i worked as a computer repair guy at my university and we had next to no Apple or Asus problems, probably close to 95% where hp and dell.

Rescuecom releases reports in a regular basis. The last one was in August, which is probably the one that you were thinking of.

Here is a search string that will dig up the other two previous reports:
http://www.tomshardware.com/search.php?s=rescuecom

akoegle, I used to work in a shop as well, never touched apple but that doesn't mean there were no problems with Apple devices..... alot of people prefer to deal directly with apple, because a non-certified tech would void your apple warranty...

Well, I can tell you that as far as Asus goes, from a personal experience, their laptops are very good quality, as well as their motherboards. BUT, pray you never have any issues where you have to actually call their technical support! Their tech support is by far the worst, most horrible I've ever dealt with. If you call or email, goodluck EVER getting a reply of any sort. And if you do, be prepared to get a tech who has no idea what they are talking about. So yes, the product is awesome, but maybe they cut corners on support since they rarely need to use it...

In the last two years I have closely followed six Apple computers. One is the Macbook Pro that I use on a daily basis, two are iMacs owned by close friends, and three are also Macbook Pros owned by two other close friends. In the two years we have owned these computers, all six have had countless problems.

Every single one of the Macbooks had faulty DVD drives that stopped functioning after a year. Two of the Macbooks and both iMacs had critical failures of their video cards, preventing them from working until they were repaired. One had a defective battery that had to be replaced at full cost. My Macbook has several bad pixels and the screen bleeds severely on the left side. Every one of these computers have issues with overheating to the point that they are extremely uncomfortable to use in any application that puts the computer under load.

Having used my Macbook Pro exclusively as a personal computer for the last 18 months, I consider it to be the most miserable computer I have ever owned. I have had endless problems with it, and yet it cost $1,000 more than the Asus notebook I was considering of equal (and in some aspects, better) technical specs. I will never choose to own an Apple computer again after my experience, and it baffles me that some of my friends continue to buy from them in light of their own experiences.

Having said that, I will admit that Apple makes itself very available for tech support and repair. In almost every major metro area, Apple has at least one Genius bar in a local Apple store. In each case of trouble with our Macs, my friends and I (until my warranty ran out) turned to Apple for our support. From what I know of them, everyone I know that owns an iPhone, iPod, Macbook, or other Apple product goes to Apple when they have a problem, not a third-party tech support group.

In other words? I call foul on Rescuecom's claim of "Factual, unbiased data."

There's several companies that release this same statistic. For example, squaretrade lists them currently at Asus, Toshiba, Sony, Apple, Dell (in that order, best first). I recall seeing a similar article as well; I'm guessing it was based on another source.

...correct. Becuase I don't remember the last time an Apple user had a choice in this matter (i.e. not going to the Apple store).

A completely useless group of "statistics" presented as facts to promote more unnecessary Apple propaganda. Why would any Apple users call a PC repair company instead of dealing with Apple directly? These people have been trained to run to Apple for any problems with Apple devices.

Chances are that the majority (>95%) of Apple users use the Genius Bar. So the rest of Apple users (other ~5%) use third party services like Rescuecom. VERY roughly speaking, you can make the argument that for every 1 Apple computer Rescuecom repairs, the Genius Bar must repair 19 Apple computers. Hmmmm...

Also, Dell packages most systems with a warranty (at least if you just click and buy, and not configure),so I would expect Dell's numbers to be skewed also.

Although you can make the same argument about most OEMs...hah

Wintarded micro$uxx fankiddies having HW problems with the ranking? It's not a windblow$, or osx issue - if you like it or not, the metric referred in the classification is a mixed one: "Reliability is attributed to a combination of two areas: quality of components used by a manufacturer, and the success of after sale support provided by the manufacturer."
From this point of view apple's top reliability is valid - it offers a great lu$er experience, by having reliable HW, and/or great in-house support services, so an apple lu$er feels less need to go to third parties (rescuecom, in this case). Explained in laymen terms: even if the HW is crappy, the support is excellent, or vice versa, or somewhere in between.
As for the windumbed comments that a mac is not a pc, all are pcs - newer ones even use identical HW - just that the one you're considering to be a pc, is actually one from the ibm (compatible) bunch...
ps: No dell crap fanboys complaining?

This article isn't about the quality of the computer but rather the support given. As they state, bad tech support leads customers to call a 3rd party tech support company such as Rescuecom.

Although HP might show huge numbers here, it may only mean that HP's tech support can't keep up with their sales volume. It doesn't mean that the HP laptops suck. By this article's statistics gathering, the top brand Apple could very well have many more bad systems, but their tech support is good, so fewer people call Rescuecom for support.

It is an interesting article if you understand its meaning. It is by no means saying Apple has the most reliable computers, just the best Tech support.

This is the most useless set of data I have ever seen. Of course the companies who sell less computers will have less calls. Hp sold 6,000,000 (six million) PCs last year at 26.6% market share. for asus that would equate to 180,000 units at lets say 3% market share. of course more people are going to call on hps that asus. how old are these computers that are having problems? USELESS USELESS data.

Corrections according to asus they sold 720,000 units last year.

so as HP has a quarter of the market, it makes sense their rating is going to be down...more chances to stuff up...
it should be out of x amount sold, y amounts of complaints were filed...

I do not believe the slightest that these data provides any insight into reliability.

You are hilarious, entertain us more. Your whine is music to my ears.

Its fun that apple can't blow the reliability scores of the roof considering that their os is made only for certain configurations while windows is made for them all. Then add apples weak marketshare wich result in fewer attempts to make malware ect its truly low levels imo

If HP sells 5 times more products then any of the the other brands then wouldnt it make sense that they have 5 times the repair rate?

I would also think most Apple user's would stay with Apple for problems.
Judging by the Apple forums I would say they have their own set of problems with certain computers. Their 27" iMac has had issues and their older MacBooks are having some hard drive failures. What is intersting to me is that buying more expensive computers does not really mean less problems. I still say heat is more of a issue and companies that sell mostly laptops will have more issues. Laptops are definately not as realiable as desktops.

Whoa, buddy. It's not about fans here, it's about selection bias.
If Apple would release such a study, their own computers would be on the last position because they would have the most service calls. It goes to show you also the reason they don't ever release such a study, because they can't.
Also, this is one article where Marcus has called it correctly "foul".

Maybe these laptops are reliable, but the report is certainly not!

You must be unlucky. I have a current MacBook Pro, my mother has a previous edition about 3 years old. I have an iMac 24", so does my father. We've also owned 12 other Macs since 1984. Counting a couple of very close business associates and personal friends, over the last 10 years, I can add another 16 Macs. Then there's the Macs i supported for my clients for years.

Out of all the Macs my family has owned, we've had a power supply recall on one MacBook Pro, 1 "stuck" dvd drive (turned out the be a shattered disk), a couple bad HDDs, and 1 blown motherboard (due to power surge through cable modem). A few other macs in the family out of the 16 did in fact die, but none were less than 7 years old when they did. The bulk of our 16 Macs (13) were sold either at tag sale or on ebay for not less than 40% of their original purchase price, and not less than 4 years after purchase.

Of the 16 Macs I have otherwise been around, they've had the occasional minor issue with a HDD, aging battery (though maybe 3 out of ALL the mac notebooks I've used required a new battery, compared to EVERY SINGLE other machine I've ever owned needing one about every 18-24 months), and there were a few effected by the motherboard recall, but they all got free repairs. I've never seen a bad pixel on a Mac display unless someone admitted to their kid getting a hold of it and damaging it, or it having been dropped.

Out of all the Macs we've ever owned, and all the ones I serviced, not one required an out-of-warranty repair before it's 4th year of operation. The most expensive repair I've ever seen was a $320 motherboard replacement (not bad for an $1800 machine).

As far as software, My father had one virus, after a "friend" of his installed iWork 09 which turned out the be an illegally downloaded copy with a worm. We've had our share of OS issues as well, but 8 in 10 an overwrite repair fixed all issues, and we've never had a single instance of data loss ever (5 users in one family since 1984, not once ever, and we really only got Dad and mom doing backups about 2 years ago when i gave them a used external HDD).

The bulk of calls to Apple have been 1) user knowledge issues (Dad tries to do stuff he doesn't know how to do, gets frustrated, screws something up, then calls apple and gets it fixed), 2) printer issues (HP drivers for Mac suck ass), 3) failure to upgrade appropriately (Dad NEVER buys more RAM until i make him, but also never buys software updates, and has a lot of issues moving off legacy software), and 4) common mechanical failures, which more than 20% of PCs have in a 3 year lifespan. We've actually never blown a power supply ever.

I supported about 400 commercial networks, working for various resellers and consulting firms over 13 of my 17 years in IT thus far. During that time, the only Macs I've ever taken service calls on were routine tasks (add a Mac to an AD network, install an upgrade, configure peripherals, etc). About 30% of my customers had at least one mac, a few of them had as much as 50% macs (photography studios, local news stations, publishers, printing houses, newspapers, schools, etc, all common to have large numbers of Macs). i can't speak to in-warranty repairs, but I can say for certain, fewer of my customers had IBM than Apple, and I serviced a LOT of IBM, and almost exclusively compaq/HP and Dell otherwise. I've serviced Apple systems less than corporate servers...

In my current employ, half of our operations department and most of our system support area folks have Macs. We're a good mix of Linux, unix, AIX, and Windows here, so most of them have strong Linux skills and take the OS X very well, but if you ask any of them why they have a mac, they'll tell you the same I will; They're more reliable overall (less maintenance, less downtime), are quicker and easier to diagnose and repair when there's a software issue, and you can't buy a PC with the same components, the power to run multiple OSs on native virtualization 64 bit hardware with a good GPU in a notebook form factor, for less money. We have over 3,000 server images we care for here, and a staff of 1200 people across IS (from the top executive to the grunts pulling cable, with about 350 of the 1200 having hands-on access to systems or working in on or another application support area, and more than half the rest are programmers). About 75% carry an iPhone, and about 30% have a Mac. These numbers are increasing, as everyone with enough exposure clearly can see, a Mac is expensive, a good PC is more expensive.

Only certain configurations? i don;t get it... First of all, Components are commodity. Any IDE drive, and SATA drive, all the common ethernet devices, anything supporting the USB spec, virtually any card from ATI or nVidia (it's a universal driver base now across their entire line), there's not a whole lot, outside of device specific drivers, that OS X doesn't support.

Further, here's some news for you:
Apple CONCURRENTLY develops their entire software line, and has since 4 years before the release of OS X, on PPC, Intel, AMD, and at least 2 other undisclosed hardware platforms. EVERY LINE of code released under OS 10.6 runs on ALL those platforms when compiled. Microsoft supports intel, AMD, and Itanium, that's IT.

Apple works with dozens of chipsets, and constantly tests against all available components. Their testing lab contains one of the largest component selections in the world. just because they choose ot only release preconfigured solutions on limited sets of components has NO BEARING on whether or not it runs on alternate sets (as is easily proven by the hackintosh community). Yes, working with EFI is a roadblock, since very few boards have support for it, but that's NOT a proprietary Apple technology, and it is the future of mainboards, and it is getting easier to find compatible boards.

Finally, Windows is NOT "made for all configurations" nor does it even support the majority of them. Microsoft publishes a hardware compatibility list same as anyone else, and only "Win 7 certified" components are Windows compatible. For example, here's the very short list of supported 1394 controllers for Win732bit: http://winqual.microsoft.com/HCL/P [...] =&f=86win7

So Asus and Lenovo has a lower percentage of pcs requiring service and yet has a lower reliability score. That makes no sense at all.

P.S. Can we have fewer Apple ads a day on Toms?