Food for thought :: 1 in 3 laptops fail in the first three years

November 17, 2009 – 10:58 am – No Comment

failure

Square Trade is a company that offers warranties on electronics. It is a third party service, but it has found something interesting over the past few years; One in 3 laptops fail within the first three years of operation and netbooks fail more frequently.

Only 1/3 of the failures are due to accidents…the other 2/3 are hardware malfunctions.

The best brands according to the report was Asus and Toshiba. The report said that fewer than 16% of the laptops had hardware malfunctions in the first 3 years.

The worst brand was HP, it had more than one in four laptops having a hardware failure within the first three years of ownership.

Square Trade also tested netbooks; it classified them as any laptop that cost less than $400. The study found that netbooks failed at a rate of 5.8% in the first year. When compared to entry level laptops’ rate of 4.7% in the first year, netbooks fail more frequently.

I have to say that for the most part, this has been true for all of the laptops I have had. I would, however, not consider Dell a “middle of the road” brand for me like the study found. I have had to replace parts on both of the Dell laptops I have had and the first Dell laptop I had (an Inspiron 5150) had this awful problem that caused the motherboard to short out.

This list has only made me want to make sure that I get some kind of warranty with my new computer purchase, not necessarily avoid one brand over another.

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