Quantcast
PCWorld.com is upgrading some back-end systems. Some site features, such as user registration, may be temporarily unavailable.
Subscribe to magazine

PC Reliability & Service: Things Fall Apart

For the straight story on mechanical breakdowns and vendor support, we polled 16,000 PC World readers and asked how their systems are holding up. The results are not encouraging.

  • 0 Yes
  • 0 No

Overall Winners and Losers

It's lonely at the top. Of the nine companies we rate this time, only one PC maker scored high enough to rank as Outstanding: Dell alone earned this distinction, for both its Work and Home PCs. The good news: Overall, no companies rank below Fair. But that's not saying much. The bad news? Since our last report in January, we see no overall improvement. Some companies dropped down a tier: Gateway slipped from Good to Fair in Home PCs and Notebook PCs. Micron and Quantex took a similar fall in Home PCs, as did Hewlett-Packard in Work PCs. For some PC makers in our Home PCs and Notebooks groups, we received too few responses from readers reporting their service experiences, so we weren't able to rank those companies on our charts. We were, however, able to rate their reliability separately. For the reliability-only charts regarding CyberMax, EMachines, NEC, and Sony (Home PCs) and Acer, Fujitsu, HP, Micron, NEC, and WinBook (Notebooks), see "Other Companies: Reliability Ratings."

--Aoife McEvoy

  • Recommend this story?
  • 0 Yes
    0 No
  • Great year-end deals for small business!

  • Get 24/7 live remote AT&T Tech Support 360* service along with select Lenovo* PCs (with Intel® Core™ 2 Duo processors and save up to 200!

    Learn more

  • HP EliteBook* 6930p Notebook with Intel® vPro™ technology and a free HP Basic Docking Station - $641 instant savings!

    Learn more

  • *Other names and brands may be claimed as the property of others. ©2009 Intel Corporation. Intel, the Intel logo, vPro and Core trademarks of Intel Corporation in the United States and other countries. All rights reserved.

Dell Fast Track

People who read this also read:

  • 15 Minutes to a Secure Business Get the Secure in 15 toolkit starting with the "15 Minutes Month-at-a-Glance" calendar. McAfee will send you additional tools and tricks to stay protected around the clock.
  • A Buyer's Guide to Data Protection Implementing data protection products and processes can be daunting. Make the right decisions by exploring what is available and what makes sense for your organization. Use this simple guide to evaluate different vendor offerings.

Sponsored Links