Slashdot Mirror
Failure Rate of PC Manufacturers?
The ever-popular Anonymous Coward asks: "Hello.
We are conducting a write-up for our clients, however we cannot seem to locate any published failure rate of PC manufacturers. Google does bring up past PC Magazine articles - but nothing recent. Does Slashdot know of a way to find this information, as this strikes me as valuable information for the computer buyer. We sell many PC's (B3 VAR) and have done for the last 5 years. We can and will produce our failure rate info - why aren't the big companies doing so?"
Consumer Reports publishes rankings of reported defects by brand for a zillion product categories, including PCs and, I think, printers, scanners, whatnot. It comes out once a year or so. I have a subscription, so I don't know how non-members can get access, but the magazine and web access are relatively cheap. They only cover the top brands, and they only report what their surveys have collected, so it may not be as double-blind and objective as one could wish. It is probably also not directly comparable to your data.
Infuriate left and right
Based on more than 69,000 desktop (73,000 laptop) computers purchased new from 2000 to 2004. Data were standardized to eliminate differences linked to age and use. Differences of less than 4 points are not meaningful.
Repairs and serious problems:
Desktops:
Laptops:
They have reports that cover this sort of thing. It costs money, but they get the data straight from the horse's mouth, as it were.
Of course, if you're just a podunk little outfit that they think will redistribute this stuff at a drop of a hat, they may refuse to sell it to you. But it can't hurt to ask.
-EvilMagnus
emphasis on average
sometimes we had items with 10% failure, but usually most things were like 1 or 2%
not that it seemed like that when working helldesk
---- Put Sig here:
I can give you an adiea fo what I see at my shop.
HP/compaq Dell gateway, I see see about the same numbers of all of these, and the failures are usually accessories or minor components, drives, memory failure, cpu failure, bad cables, etc.
IBM outnumber each of the other big 3 by about 2 to 1
IBM problems tend to be more serious as well. I can't believe how many I've seen with bad motherboards.
I rarely see any from small companies who assemble PCs with off the shelf components.
In 7 years no one has brought in a server for repair
Deployment and provisioning costs are generally greater than the actual equipment. In some environments, after you factor in software, maintenance & installation, the real cost of a PC on a desk approaches $4,000 or more.
Crappy hardware means more replacements, more downtime for workers and more time reimaging and coordinating the scheduling techs or CEs to replace broken equipment. That translates to more staff and more money.
After you factor in salary, benefits, training, telecom costs and equipment, adding another helpdesk employee can easily cost an extra $60,000/yr. Annual raises & insurance costs drive that figure up every year as well.
If you're in an environment like mine where you do phased replacements of 10,000 PCs/yr, that's adding another $6/pc, which is a significantly more than the $3-4/pc that you could have spent on better hardware to begin with.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
Even a small business can pay Dell another $60 for a "Gold" contract and get a reasonably competent tech within 2-5 minutes.
Bigger customers will have a dedicated rep, and will be able to just order replacement parts.
White box builders are a fucked business model... most can't afford to service customers with 50+ workstations.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
Crappy hardware means more replacements, more downtime for workers and more time reimaging and coordinating the scheduling techs or CEs to replace broken equipment. That translates to more staff and more money.
But doesn't the need for upgrading put the failure rate below the noise floor?
Otherwise a 10 year old PC that was still working just fine would be an incredible savings to your company.
As a doorstop, I guess. But I'm going to go out on a limb and assume you're replacing the old dinosaurs with newer, more capable upgrades. Otherwise you would have bought 10,000 dinosaurs ten years ago and be absolutely rolling in savings, right?
"I got a 386! Woo0t!!1!"