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Netbooks Have Higher Failure Rate Than Laptops
Barence writes "Netbooks are more likely to fail within the first year than their more expensive laptop brethren, according to new research. SquareTrade, an independent US warranty provider, analyzed the failure rates of more than 30,000 laptops covered by its own warranties. It found that 5.8% of netbooks malfunctioned within the first year, compared to 4.7% for regular laptops and 4.2% for premium laptops costing more than $1,000. The research also raises question marks over the legendary reliability of Macs. Three PC manufacturers — Asus, Toshiba, and Sony — boasted better reliability rates than Apple. Macs have a 17.4% malfunction rate over three years, compared to market-leader Asus, which has a 15.6% failure rate. HP was the worst of the nine PC vendors listed, with a malfunction rate of 25.6% over three years."
So you're telling me that something cheap isn't as well made as something expensive? Allow me to go re-evaluate my life...
I thought my prejudice against HP laptops was just emotional or superstitious or something. 25.6% malfunction?? They really need to work on that.
Sometimes insightful looks into popular things really makes me sit back and think...
This just makes me say, "So what?"
"Most people, I think, don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?"
Macs aren't more reliable, they just get less use (nothing important runs on them), so they take longer to wear out.
HP was the worst of the nine PC vendors listed, with a malfunction rate of 25.6% over three years
In order to malfunction it first must function, something HP's don't do very well, especially with all the nice bundled packages I have pre-installed.
my hp netbook broke in less than 2 months and took them 2 months to fix..
Considering how cheap they are I'm not surprised. My Aspire One's fan unit failed within the first 5 months and (since I voided the warranty) I can't get service on it. I tried to find a replacement heatsink/fan unit, unfortunately the only suppliers I could find wanted $90 for the damned thing.
Speaking of which, anyone here know where I could get one (or at least, a 30x30x7 (mm))? Surely Slashdot has people in the know.
They're made to be chucked in a dumpster at the airport when they fizz out. This just sounds like a vector to complain about something that's junky cause it's cheap being junky.
slashdot: where everyone yells sarcastic metaphors to themselves to understand the issue
They are cheaper and lighter and more portable and get handled a lot rougher than a $1000+ laptop. Nothing about this is news.
What is this? A report from the Maximegalon Institute of Slowly and Painfully Working Out the Surprisingly Obvious?
so people are less careful with them. Ooops, dropped it again...
After all, one of the things driving interest in NetBooks is their price. For makers to make money on them, they have to make them using lesser standards than their more expensive units. After all, a great deal of the same stuff goes into each and to keep the prices down, something had to give.
Besides, when the price is that low, people tend to start thinking of these netbooks as "disposable" and worry less about problems.
1.1% to 1.6% doesn't seem like that huge of a difference especially when we are talking about a device that is smaller and obviously more fragile than it's beefier compatriots. Not to mention the lower standards of quality when manufacturing a practically disposable mini computer.
Completely offtopic, but I remember almost getting scammed by someone on Autotrader.com years ago that wanted to use a third party company to hold my money while I test drove the car in question. The supposed third party was actually the scammer and was calling their "service" SquareTrade.
While I have absolutely no doubt that $300 netbooks die more often, there's no way I'm going to trust the numbers from a company that primarily offers warranty service to computers sold on Ebay.
I strongly suspect that a lot of the Apple, Dell and (especially) Lenovo notebooks they're servicing are several years old and are probably used or lease return models to begin with.
-- I wanna decide who lives and who dies - Crow T. Robot, MST3K
Look, the reason these machines are failing more readily really isn't that complex. The market for netbooks is effectively a competition to see who can produce the cheapest functioning computer that can connect to the internet quickly. That's all it is. When companies aim to reduce retail cost of their products, they begin cutting corners. They buy cheap parts, they rush production, they slap things together that they know don't work as well. It's nothing amazing or surprising. Netbooks are just cheap.
The data are fishy. Do they fail because people buy a netbook because they can take them more places, and thus have a higher incidence of failure because they're being carried and used in more places? My own experience with a netbook vs laptop is that the Asus EEE PC I purchased nearly two years ago is still going strong without a single hardware issue, vs the cheap Dell that lasted a year before developing critical power issues (right after my warranty expired, of course) and the Fujitsu Lifebook likewise failing with hinge death at about a year and a half, after a long run of problems. My Asus netbook seems to just be more rugged than your average PC. Also, I take the thing everywhere, where my last laptops were left home a lot more because they weighed so much more.
It couldn't be because they are cheap and small that Netbooks are more likely to get abused than their high dollar counterparts?
I know that I don't take near as good of care of my $300 netbook as I do of my $2000 laptop.
Practically everyone I've ever known with a Mac has had major hardware issues with it, especially laptops with things like weak power plugs breaking off at the motherboard requiring a full main board replacement.
Apple's service has always seemed outstanding, issues get resolved well and quickly, but the basic hardware... When there's a choice to be made between looks and function or reliability, Apple takes looks each and every time. Apple sells style, not quality.
My
25.6% it is, and it can be actually proven by just asking people you know that have HPs less that 4 years old. My dv6t has 3 different malfunctions after 6 month of regular use: Faulty battery, a hard disk that crashes once a month and a cooling fan that sounds like it's breaking ice. Nothing is built as it used to be anymore...
Water Found to Be Wet!
This ain't rocket surgery.
I saw this the other day. What struck me most is that Sony and Apple have historically had the highest failure rates in the industry (maybe other than HP), and Dell has had among the lowest. Toshiba appears to have consistently low failure rates. I'm glad to see that Apple and Sony have improved (assuming the accuracy of the report), and very disappointed at Dell's slide.
Still, as an IT support guy, those numbers don't jive with what I see. Apple laptops need warranty service far more often than this study indicates, in my experience. I'd like to know more about the methodology of the survey.
If you are squaretrade, the independent warranty provider, does their business model work at these failure rates? I was too lazy to go figure out what SquareTrade would do with a laptop that qualifies for their warranty coverage.
If they replace it, it seems to me these failure rates would bust their business compared to the price of the warranty. Maybe it's like American Health Insurance. It looks like it provides protection, but the details say otherwise.
I could be totally wrong though.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
I wonder how much of the failure rates is due to problems with Nvidia chips?
Before I get downmodded as a troll or for flamebait, please note that Nvidia has had well documented problems with reliablility, due to materials used in the chip bumping and finishing processes.
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They just don't make them like they used it. I'm sure most of us still have beige computers from the early nineties that are still crunching while the shiny computers they make today will die after a few years, if not sooner. I believe the common assumption that Apple computers last longer should also be questioned; I haven't seen much evidence to say that they do. Macs do retain their resale value better than commodity stuff, but that doesn't matter so much if what you're trying to sell doesn't work; it will always be worth a lot less.
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This isn't too surprising, really. Whenever you go for the cheap end of things, you get poor quality.
Now don't understand me-- I'm not saying that it's good. I think it'd be great if we could make cheap things also be good quality. Like I imagine someone could manufacture netbooks and still sell them relatively cheaply just by virtue of the fact that they use fewer components and less materials. However, the tendency in a situation like this is for the manufacturer to say, "These are cheaper products with tight profit margins. These are also budget products, and people who buy budget products will tend to buy the cheapest thing available. Let's just cut every corner, make them as cheap as possible, and not worry too much about quality." It's the same reason we get $5 blenders at Walmart that break after a year.
Of course, the problem is often that it's hard for consumers to tell the difference, so companies sometimes don't provide a good middle ground. Like you might find yourself in a situation where you can find a cheap $5-10 blender that will break in the next year, and the next step up is a $1000 "luxury" blender with a built in toaster oven, speakers, and iPhone dock. I guess simple, high quality, economical goods don't sell.
The whole selling point about netbooks is that you take it with you wherever you go, including the bus, the plane, and as such it's stuffed in backpacks or bumped around all the time. The average laptop probably spends more time in one location and isn't transported as often, since a large portion of people are using them as replacement desktops that could be taken home if needed, but often aren't. Myself I leave my laptop locked up at work if I don't need to do any work at home.
and why is this not surprising in the least? you're trying to pack a processor and all the necessary components for a real computer in a netbook not much room for error
Failure rates are within 2-3 percentage points. Who cares. What really makes a difference is the SUPPORT you get from a vendor, not what percentage of the shipments fail over time.
Hardware fails. Especially portable hardware. It's a fact of life, and engineering builds that in. It's impossible to build a machine completely immune to failure without spending astronomical amounts of money. And it's also not reasonable.
What makes Apple an attractive vendor is Apple Care. You get your circuitboard replaced for $0 that normally cost a thousand dollars. Hard disk failure? $0 replacement. Optical disk drive failure? $0 replacement.
Dell and other vendors have similar programs. In the end, you cannot look at pure failure rates because failure rates are part of the design of hardware. You also need to consider support costs.
I wonder how much of the difference is due to the environment they are used (and transported) in.
My laptop spends most of it's time on my desk, and it travels in a laptop bag. But my netbook gets tossed in my backpack and I take it with me more often. Likewise, my gf takes hers to work in her (big) purse.
But correlation isn't causality. It may be that cheaper = worse, or it may be that cheaper = smaller form factor = more portability = more transportation and use = more wear and tear = more breakdowns. The article also says that Apple laptops are less reliable, but it could also be that Apple laptops are used more by their owners and again are subject or greater wear and tear. Or it could be that Apple makes crap laptops. With a correlation design, you cannot infer causality.
So how do Asus Netbooks fair, then ? :)
ASUS EEE PC - 7 inch 4 gig SSD model: Screen's flakey in less than a year. You have to sometimes bend & twist the display, otherwise it shows just pure gray for an image.
Acer Aspire One: Windows died randomly on one occasion(reinstall fixed that). Bios died a few weeks ago, but took only 5 minutes to fix.
I'd say the heat dissipation is not as good in netbooks vs laptops just as starters.
"Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy - Benjamin Franklin"
What these people fail to understand is that buying an extended warranty causes failures. I never buy the extended warranty and my gadgets experience negligible failure rates. The last thing I've had fail was a 12 year-old TV set.
The alternate explanation is that people who buy extended warranties are people whose experience indicate that it's a good investment--the klutzes.
I'm a Programmer. That's one level above Software Engineer and one level below Engineer.
People are more compelled to chuck a netbook into their backpack, and take it places where they wouldn't take a laptop. It probably sees more general abuse because it feels less delicate and more like a toy.
Twinstiq, game news
Did anyone else find it odd that Dell was not listed or even mentioned? Or that data seemed to be missing?
Give us a spiffy little graphic or something. What was all tested?
Since when does being a Socialist mean 'someone who has a different opinion than me'?
Almost all netbooks on sale today with are intel-inside with cheeeep atom-chipsets with integrated graphics...
Nvidia ION-netbooks are just hitting the shelves now (not available until recently), and we'll see, but there aren't likely any historical failure rate number for any of the Nvidia ones yet.
Anecdotal evidence based on practical experience: I dragged my Samsung NC20 all over Europe and obscure parts of Russia and before that I had a well travelled Samsung NC10 and abused the crap out of it and they are both working just fine. These units went through customs time after time, banged around, exposed to -10c temperatures, countless flights, and copious exposure to the funky Soviet Era power wiring with no ill effects!
I had much worse luck with my HP DV9000 laptop (something happened to the freaking hinge and the LCD would just cut out from time to time and reboot the system) and my Lenovo G530 (two functions keys mysteriously stopped working). The funny thing is I treated the laptops much better than the netbooks - go figure.
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The sample data is based on laptops using SquareTrade's extended warranty coverage. What's the profile of SquareTrade users?
I was surprised by Levono's ranking (6th) since ThinkPads usually have a solid reputation which makes them popular among corporate users.
I'm thinking that if SquareTrade's audience is nearly all consumers, the sample for Levono may be relatively quite small.
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1: You get what you pay for, and these boogers are practically disposable. 2: I got the granddaddy of 'em all, the Eee PC 701, the split-second they hit the market. Aside from some case damage from taking it apart w/o a guide, still runs like a dream.
"You know you're narcissistic when you quote yourself in your sigs." -- PRoPAiN!
lol@ HP,
i used to work in this POS company and i can testify, most of the products they sell now are CR4p.....
Something that fits in my jacket / backpack / cargo pants will likely be banged up and abused much more than my dad's laptop which is carried with care in a carrying case. It's been dropped a couple times, already had to replace the HDD.
:)
It is a Seagate, so it just might have to being a crap HD though
I've got better things to do tonight than die.
These are in my experience the most reliable laptops I've ever owned.
These things never break.
Are they comparing all netbooks to all laptops? Is this a hardware failure rate or software/os failure rate? Are they comparing SSDs to HDDs? Price ranges? Are these "sent back for repair" rates or "actually needed repairs" rates? At least they did mention that netbooks are new to the field so at least some of it is understandable there. Whenever percentages and statistics get thrown around I get very leery about the interpretation of the results. Lies, damn lies, statistics, etc.
Many notebooks had failures related to faulty nVidia chips, including Mac's. I wonder if that is inflating these stats?
Is this really a quality issue?
Or, do people who buy more expensive products tend to be more computer-literate or take better care of products?
Competition Good, Monopoly Bad.
Does this survey actually look at the failure of each unit across the board or just those units that have had a SquareTrade warranty purchased? And, following that line of thought, are those that paid extra for a third party warranty more likely to abuse their hardware knowing that they will have a free replacement on the way if something breaks? And finally, does this sampling error completely invalidate the thesis of their study?
If you are going to reply with "you can still assume the failure rate is higher for one vs. the other" please don't. If the sample is so blatantly biased, any number of other factors might be involved. For example, psychologically there may be little hesitation for someone to say "why not balance a jug of water on my head whilst I type on my $300 netbook, it's warrantied" whereas they would be less likely to do so when using a $3000 laptop, regardless of the warranty they have on it.
Another /. story brought this to my attention and I did some digging. It turns out that the entire tech-blog-sphere is basing their articles on a 'study' done by Squaretrade, a company that sells extended warranties for computers and phones. I won't get into the ethics of selling warranties for brand-new computers that already carry OEM warranties.
The problem is that Squaretrade is in direct competition with Apple's Applecare. A few quick searches on their website shows that their plans cost more than applecare and that they lack some of the features of applecare (phone support, apple store support, ups dropoff service, etc).
So my advice is to take that bar graph with a grain of salt.
-b
No offense, but I've stopped responding to AC's.
Mac laptops don't have "power plugs" attached to their mainboard-- they all use MagSafe adapters which suffer extremely little wear and tear.
Right, except for the magsafe pin springs breaking, the magsafe cord fraying/breaking off the connector because of cheap strain relief (since fixed).
I find it funny that everyone is making a big hooplah between 1-in-4 and 1-in-5 failure rate differences. Either way, folks, those stats SUCK.
Please help metamoderate.
Well, true, *except*, there's the factor of how well you engineer your prototype before you turn it over to the Chinese factory for production, and how much of a stickler for detail you're going to be as your product is produced.
As I understand it, working with Chinese factories requires taking micro-management to new levels, if you want a quality product as the end result. If you don't spec out every last little detail, they'll pick through it and find places to do substitutions to increase their profit margins. "Oh, he uses a 10 microfarad capacitor here? Well, he didn't specify a certain brand. Lets use this cheap one our sister factory makes and save half a cent on each one!" Next thing you know, your product is having more failures than you anticipated and it turns out to be that one lousy capacitor at fault....
That's just a made-up example, but you get the general idea. There are probably all sorts of little details about how long a circuit board should sit in the solder bath, or how long something should cool before it gets painted or has another process applied to it ... all kinds of things that can affect the long-term quality of a product. Traditionally in a U.S. based factory, a lot of that might have gone without saying. You figure "they do this process all the time, and know how to do the job for me". But you can't make such assumptions of the Chinese factories.
My University leased laptops to all the students. The art majors made a stink about IBM lappies and the second or third year into the program, they began leasing Macs to art majors ... long story short: the Macs had a higher DOA rate than the IBM lappies.
My two year HP pavillion dv6535ep laptop exibited the following behaviour during time:
* After two months:
- A lcd pixel near the bottom right corner stoped working, it is red all the time.
* After four months:
- Maximum battery capacity lowered to less than half.
* After a year and couple of months:
- The integrated (USB) camera stopped working due to bad contact on wiring near screen hinge. The camera starts/stops working everytime the screen is tilted.
* After two years:
- The power supply adapter stopped working (it shorts the mains when it gets too hot).
My previous laptop was a Acer Aspire 1520:
* The battery capacity didn't go below ~80% after four years.
* The nvidia graphics card failed after one year and something.
* The power supply adapter failed with a lot of white smoke after two years and something.
* A SMD transistor popped up from mainboard after five years. After soldering it myself, the laptop continued working perfectly until today.
And yes, I'm carefull with laptops, I take proper measures to preserve battery life and my house's electrical mains are not faulty.
My EEE has been rock solid and my co-worker dropped down a set of concrete stairs and it survived. Mine is a 901 and his is even older.
I think old netbooks were more durable. They had no hard drive and they were fairly minimal. Now netbooks are just little laptops and often with a hard drive. It's not really a netbook anymore but a little laptop with all the same laptop problems and put in a smaller space so they're likely more susceptible to heat problems.
I am looking for the perfect netbook, and surely someone on slashdot knows where to find it?
Touchscreen, size SSD, HD's don't survive long on a moving train and are slow as hell anyway.
3G internal modem. (Wifi is just not available in enough places)
More then 1G of memory.
Dual core (atom speed is fine, dual really helps with responsiveness)
Large battery (9 cell)
Ideally: bluetooth internal. 1-2 interal USB slots (so that a stick or whatever doesn't have to stick out)
Tablet option:
Video output from thin cable, not the old d-sub thank you very much.
Anyone know a netbook like this? I need something that works on the move and can stand a bit of a beating. I am not suprised they fail more often, my Aspire one ZG5 gets an amount of abuse that I would never dare with a laptop.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
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Netbooks are marketed as something you just throw in your purse or backpack and whip out when you need it.
I bet they get a lot of abuse, and users cry about how it didn't last too long being tossed into the messenger bag and being sat on while busing back and forth across campus.
I'm surprised they last as well as they do. A 25%+ failure rate over 3 years is pretty good. I would expect that to be an annual failure rate. People treat their portable PCs like crap.
When I sold maintenance agreements on notebooks, I billed them a 75% premium if they didn't let me see it at least once in 12 months. Tightening up the hinges and covers and cleaning out the fan adds years to the life of many notebooks. I didn't take Thinkpads under maintenance cause I advised my clients they were tougher than that. I didn't take Dell machines cause they just don't support them. No parts. HP/Compaq were not my favorites, though they work. Toshiba I avoid, Acer I actually like. I have an Acer 1846 that is still going, though I just put in my third DC power jack. At least I can solder that board without it crinkling up like a piece of tissue paper.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
even if you buy an Asus about 1 in 6 of them will fail within 3 years ?
Why is the headline not laptop QA standards are so shit 1 in 6 fail within 3 years ?
Wasn't the original EeePC designed for school kids? I'll bet netbooks have a higher proportion of school-age owners than full laptops. If this is the case, they're going to get much rougher treatment and therefore a higher failure rate.
From a practical standpoint, that is. Whether the failure rate is 5.8% or 4.2% (even assuming the differences are statistically significant), all of the devices give the buyer about a 19/20 chance of success and a 1/20 chance of failure. I can't see basing any buying decision on that, as opposed to a $300 vs $1200 price, or whether the machine has capabilities that meet your needs well.
I have just found that mine usually fails right after the warranty runs out.
We need a Panasonic ToughNetBook... you know, a mil-spec hardened netbook, available only in camouflage.
I bet that in 20 years, my tin can will still be holding soup, whereas your laptop will, at best, be sitting on a shelf in a museum.
Sometimes a simple device with fewer parts can be both less expensive and more reliable than the more expensive model. This is particularly true of some generations of the high end gaming laptops, dealing with heat issues in a small space. They were both quite expensive, and somewhat unreliable.
With net-books, the fact that they cost 1/4th of what a high end laptop would go for is a given. It's not a given that they would be less reliable - it's easy to cool a low clocked processor and video card - a well designed model might not need fans. Likewise a small, low resoltion display might not have as high a defect rate, and it's very reasonable to expect flash memory to be more reliable than a hard drive in typical use-case scenarios.
so, pick *one* model to recommend, based on least amount of repairs noticed/most reliable, etc
Unfortunately, Atom-based Netbooks have a 100% failure rate with the latest updates to "Snow Leopard." :-S
4,5 aren't possible thanks to Intel and Microsoft. Having a tablet with a touchscreen seems to be an inexisting market.
Sorry. A friend of mine wanted something like that too.