20 – 30% of Notebooks Fail Over 3 Years; HPs Fail Most
November 17th, 2009 by K. T. Bradford
SquareTrade, an independent warranty provider for electronics, released a study today on the reliability of laptops broken down by price and by manufacturer. The first part of the survey doesn’t contain any groundbreaking news: netbooks and budget laptops malfunction at a greater rate than their higher-priced counterparts. The second part is a bit more intriguing and reveals that the manufacturers on top of the market don’t necessarily make computers that last.
SquareTrade divides notebooks into three categories based on price: netbooks (under $400), entry-level ($400 – $1000) and premium (over $1000) and, using data from the laptops they cover, show that over a year netbooks have a 20% higher malfunction rate than entry level and a 40% higher rate than premium laptops. They project that over three years, 25.1% of netbooks will malfunction while only 20.6% and 18.1% of entry-level and premium notebooks will. So far netbooks fail at a greater rate, but why is that?
Tags: netbooks, notebooks, HP, Acer | 7 Comments »

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