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?"

Comments

Pardon me for stating the obvious...

[Monte]

...but at these prices, who cares about failure rates?

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 :) about people buying whole new systems just because their current PC is loaded with spyware.

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.

Consumer reports says:

[Anonymous Coward]

Posting AC so no one knows :) Consumer Reports tracks this info. Here it is, with their disclaimer:

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:

• Apple: 12%
• Sony: 16%
• Dell: 17%
• eMachines: 19%
• IBM: 20%
• HP: 21%
• Compaq: 21%
• Gateway: 24%

Laptops:

• Toshiba: 16%
• Apple: 16%
• IBM: 17%
• Sony: 17%
• Dell: 17%
• HP: 19%
• Gateway: 21%
• Compaq: 21%

Re:Time-span?

[EricV314a]

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