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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?"
...but at these prices, who cares about failure rates?
:) about people buying whole new systems just because their current PC is loaded with spyware.
For personal use the PC will most likely become obsolete (at least in the eyes of the user) before it becomes broken. On slashdot we've seen stories (over and over again
If it's for business use, and you've got to have 100% uptime, failure rate sill doesn't matter, since at these prices you buy multiple redundant systems and then sleep well at night.
Besides, how do you collect your data? It seems to me that by the time you've got good long-haul use data on your systems you won't be selling them anymore in favor of new models. And I don't see how extropolating data for new models based on old model performance is terribly useful.
By way of analogy - if new cars only cost a grand, you'd replace your car long before anything serious went wrong with it. About the time the ashtrays were full, a flat tire would be just the excuse you'd need to go shopping for the Latest Greatest Leetest Carxen.
It's a "gentleman's agreement" among the top-tier PC makers. I won't make you show yours if you don't make me show mine. There is very little to gain, and a lot to lose, especially if you consider how malleable the definition of "failure" is in the PC market. User deletes system files and renders PC unbootable? Chalk it up as another failure!
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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:
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
At my last job we had 2 white box shops down the road. We picked the nice family run place and bought most everything there. We steered our customers to the same place and worked out standard configurations. Everyone is happy.
After being swallowed by Fortune 50 company we had to use standard corp-rat ordering and buy from the big name vendor. New equipment doesn't work, standard configurations aren't available from week to week. "Next day" support means a week or more to get working replacement part. Telephone troubleshooting takes longer than the walk down the block. Did I mention how frustrating telephone support scripts are?