Who Offers the Best Tech Support for Laptops?

Deals
By
Published

You may not care so much about tech support for your desktop, but for a laptop it matters a bit more.

Latest Videos FromTom's Hardware
Marcus Yam
Marcus Yam
Marcus Yam served as Tom's Hardware News Director during 2008-2014. He entered tech media in the late 90s and fondly remembers the days when an overclocked Celeron 300A and Voodoo2 SLI comprised a gaming rig with the ultimate street cred.
69 Comments Comment from the forums
  • maigo
    Apple is great, they're giving out free rubber bands to iphone owners
    Reply
  • Tamz_msc
    Apple with grade A? Are you kidding?A few months ago I visited their store and inquired about the macbooks.I asked them about the screen sizes available-they told me that 13, 15 and 17 inches were available.Then I asked about the resolution, and all of them gave me a blank look.I kept on asking every one of their representatives and in the end they handed over a catalog which is essentially the same as the tech specs on their website.So, I decided that I had enough of apple.
    Reply
  • Godhatesusall
    Apple is great,theyre charging 2x what they should charge, in every product.

    Reply
  • eddieroolz
    Apple given an A? More like customers are simply deceived and blindly believe that they are receiving awesome tech support when in reality, they are not.
    Reply
  • jeraldjunkmail
    Asus and Lenovo as the only other companies to get an A in one or the other of the categories? Who paid for this study?
    Reply
  • enewmen
    Acer is really much better outside the U.S. Acer stores are common in Asia where you can drop off a broken notebook and have it fixed under warranty within 1-2 days. Then pick it up when it's ready. Also getting support with a live person right in front of you is no problem - just a 15 min wait.

    But yes I agree, Acer sucks in the States. I had to ship mine to Texas and pay for shipping when I had trouble in California. A complete system check was also just impossible.

    Dell was awesome in the late Nineties.
    Reply
  • gayanx86
    Apple knows their fans are utter n00bs, so they give a top notch Tech Support :P
    Reply
  • I needed servicing for two of my laptops this year. My mom's HP had a keyboard problem and spent 10 days at HP, before it was ready. My personal DELL studio had a CPU+MB broken last Wednesday. I received the computer in Friday (43 hours after leaving it for servicing) I have no idea how can you give HP such a grade. + it took me an hour to negotiate with HP on the phone before they admitted it should be a HW problem. Dell were much more friendly (of we can use that word) and only 10 after I called they asked me to send the computer for servicing. As a conclusion from my 2010 experience - good job for dell (and much better, compared to 2-3 years ago)
    Reply
  • abcdeasdfasdf
    Ha... the good point is which machine is "foolproof", my laptop, being a budget business class off-lease, with printer/SP2/3/Bluetooth/Ethernet/Wi-Fi/chipset/Intel GMA driver, took better half of a day to brings up to speed from a pristine Windows XP to the loaded drive I bought initially; most laptops are already built strong. BTW it is HP.

    Apple's machines are all foolproof.
    Reply
  • I needed servicing for two of my laptops this year. My mom's HP had a keyboard problem and spent 10 days at HP, before it was ready. My personal DELL studio had a CPU+MB broken last Wednesday. I received the computer in Friday (43 hours after leaving it for servicing) I have no idea how can you give HP such a grade. + it took me an hour to negotiate with HP on the phone before they admitted it should be a HW problem. Dell were much more friendly (of we can use that word) and only 10 after I called they asked me to send the computer for servicing. As a conclusion from my 2010 experience - good job for dell (and much better, compared to 2-3 years ago)
    Reply