Posted on 12/02/2015 8:47:54 PM PST by Swordmaker
Whatever brand you swear by (or at) there's good news, and bad, in the findings. But this Consumer Reports survey of 58,000 notebook owners finds one vendor has a huge edge in reliability and satisfaction - and it probably isn't yours.
Notebook computers can be one of the most maddening consumer devices ever - especially when they break. A survey of 58,000 Consumer Reports subscribers adds some welcome evidence into just how likely notebooks are to break - by brand.
Consumer Reports is the world's largest independent, nonprofit, consumer product testing organization. They buy the products they test, don't accept advertising, and don't allow their results to be used for promotion. I'm a fan of their work.
BIG PICTURE
In the survey, almost 20 percent of respondents reported a breakdown in the first 3 years of use, most of them seriously affecting system use.
Apple, as in year's past, has the most reliable notebooks by far - a 10 percent breakdown rate in the first 3 years - with Samsung and Gateway distant seconds at 16 percent, and the rest of the industry - including Acer, Lenovo, Toshiba, HP, Dell and Asus, at 18-19 percent.
Windows machines used more than 20 hours a week - average for Windows systems - have a higher break rate. Apple users report using their machines an average of 23 hours a week, 15 percent more. More hours, fewer breakdowns, what's not to like?
WHEN BREAKDOWNS OCCUR
Yet Apple buyers face problems too. While overall reliability is good, Apple notebooks have a consistent 3-4 percent annual breakdown rate, while Windows machines are much more likely to fail in the first year, often under warranty.
While Apple notebooks break less often, when they do they are often more expensive to fix. That's one reason why CR advises Apple buyers to consider the Apple Care extended warranty, especially since Apple's phone support is highly rated. On Windows machines, they advise you to save money by skipping add-on warranties.
However, Windows machines are more likely to be lemons: among those that broke, 55 percent did so multiple times. The figure for Apple was 42 percent.
CUSTOMER SAT
Psychologists have found that an early negative experience takes many positive experiences to overcome. A rational economic actor - if there was one! - might think that sure, Windows notebooks fail more often, but they cost less, so OK.
But people aren't rational.
High early failure rates may be a key factor in another of CR's findings: 71 percent of Apple notebook owners were completely satisfied with system reliability; only 38 percent of Windows notebook owners were. Ouch!
THE STORAGE BITS TAKE
The survey results - 58,000 is a big sample size by any measure - should end the argument over whether MacBook hardware is better or not. It is. Get over it.
But you - and probably the survey respondents - can buy a $400 Windows notebook, so I'd like the results better if they'd controlled for product price. Maybe a $850 Windows machine is just as reliable as an $850 MacBook Air.
One would hope!
Oh, and by the way, that $849 MacBook Air, was not even the least expensive one that Apple was selling. I just selected it because it was the closest one to the $850 price you were being so dismissive about. There were two others that were for sale for less. . . both with brand new warranties.
Below you will find a Toshiba 13.3” Chromebook getting Amazon reviews as good as the 13.3” Macbook and at one third the price!!! $300 vs $900!
versus
My wife, bless her heart, tends to practice, uh, less than safe internetting. As a result, her Dell Windows 10 laptop kept accumulating so many viruses I got tired of cleaning them out.
My solution? I gave her my Apple iPad Air 2 with keyboard case and mouse. That was almost six months ago, and she loves it. The best part? No viruses.
And the Dell? After removing all the viruses, I installed Ubuntu and now have it on a dual boot. I’m happy.
PLUS>>>
Screen Resolution 1920X1080 pixels for $300 Toshiba 13.3” Chromebook
vs
1440 x 900 Screen Resolution for the $900 13.3” Macbook
ChromeBooks. . .
The first is a dumb terminal filled with spyware, the other is a secure computer.
Nuff said
If you are going to *USE* a laptop, I would recommend a cheap Win box - It's likely to be stolen, destroyed or outdated (depreciated) in two years anyway, maybe three... Why spend or risk extra?
One of my boxes back in the day... I had just bought it for 1200 bucks - beautiful box, with all the bells and whistles... Just got it loaded up, and on my first day of use, it was sprinkling, so I set it on the tire under the wheel well of my truck, so I could better use my hands talking to the contractor... We got done, and I hopped into my truck and drove away - leaving that 1200 dollar beauty a disintegrated mess in the tracks behind me. Haven't bought a fancy laptop since.
Not that you do or don't have a point - I don't care how durable it is beyond it's reasonable life - and that, in real use, is less than three years.
I own a notebook and a laptop, huge difference?
BS! Google will track you on your chromebook but there is no spyware on it. No viruses or malware. Everyone who buys a chromebook knows about the google hook
NEWSFLASH--- Most Apple laptops are used as dumb terminals, meaning used for internet access same as less expensive chromebooks
Apparently, you can't even beat em' to death with a Mack truck. . .
In my office, we are now replacing five year old MacBook Airs, not because they are failing, but because the software we must use for running the office has progressed beyond their capability to run with their max memory capacity. These MacBooks Airs have been left turned on 24/7 since put in service. . . and used heavily for about 10 hours five days per week. One we had to have the battery replaced because it decided to not hold more than a fifteen minute charge. No problem, took 25 minutes in an Apple Store. The can even run the latest OS X El Capitan, but MacPractice wants a little more RAM to operate then they have, so we are handing them on to other new Mac users.
The same issue is requiring us to replace our eight year old iMacs. We've even had to replace our Mac Mini Server. Sometime next year, we're scheduled to replace our Mac Pro with a several year newer one. With 32 GBs it's got plenty of RAM to handle the 3D radiographs but it's getting long in the tooth. . . and the drives need to be updated to something that can handle a faster tech such as Thunderbolt.
When Apple first introduced the MacBook Air in January of 2008, one of their displays was a seven foot tall ladder in which the riser rungs were production MacBook Airs on which a 120 pound model was repeatedly climbing up and down. Every so often, they'd swap out a computer and put it on the counter for people to use as a demo and put one of the demos back as a rung on the ladder. They did not distort or get injured by being stressed by being stepped on.
The MacBook Airs have survived being run over by Semitrucks speeding at 70 MPH after being dropped from speeding cars with only minor damage. MacBook Pros have survived similar accidents. Here's a MacBook Pro that survived a fall from a car and then got run over by another car. Here's another: MacBook Pro run over by a Mazda 3.
One MacBook Air I know of survived a thousand foot fall from an airplane. No cracked screen, warped frame, broke the trackpad, but it still ran. Others have fallen and cracked the screen but still worked.
Some makers differentiate their models by a naming convention: larger portables as laptops, smaller as notebooks. Other don't. The lines are blurred, especially among reviewers and punditry. Some reviews combines both as one class. . . portable computers.
Chrome OS is the spyware. . . You don't have to have third party spyware. Microsoft Windows 10 is now the same type of spyware. It doesn't MATTER who is spying on you. What matters is that someone is spying on you. . . and Google is doing it even though they signed agreements NOT TO DO IT!
EFF complaint says Google broke privacy pledge by tracking students
If you are OK with that, fine. Give up your essential privacy for small change. You show yourself to be cheap. My privacy and freedom are worth far more than a few bucks.
I thought only long haired, hemp shirt wearing, manpurse carrying liberals used Apple products?
>> ...if there are 700 people in your ping list, 680 of them must be dead or banned. it's the same 12 to 15 devotees that are hyperactive in your threads . . . over, and over, and over.
Zounds! Dead or banned? I strongly doubt that. Addressed below...
> No, the list is updated regularly. It is one of the larger ping lists on FR. . . and I've added members regularly and removed them when they request to be removed or are no longer on FR. You really don't have a clue. I frequently get thanks from members. . . and about 3-5 new members every month. Very few Apple people have gotten banned... There are only about a dozen of you Anti-Apple Hate brigade members, though. You are the delusional one. Quite a few of them have been banished for misbehavior on Apple threads in the past...
"A dozen", eh? Sounds like we have a team here... Maybe we could assign them appropriate team duties... JohnBrowdie can be in charge of fantasy-'n-fiction, dennisw can be in charge of managing Apple stock shares, that sort of thing.
> You can ask dayglored and Thundersleeps how fast their ping lists are growing. . . and I've been managing the Apple List for over 12 years. . . and when I was first asked to do it and agreed, I wound up with over 150 members in less than a week of announcing it. It's been growing steadily ever since. The number of active readers (mostly lurkers) is accurate.
When I started the Windows ping list, I had about 75 people the first week (in April of this year), and it's now at about 130 after 8 months. In that time people have joined at maybe 1 or 2 per week, and about half a dozen people have dropped off also. I don't know if it'll ever rival the Apple list in size, but we certainly don't lack for excitement. :-)
But the point is that the thing JohnBrowdie mentioned -- that it seemed like there was a relatively small core of people who did most of the commenting -- well, that's true of the Windows list too, and I think it's true of most lists. For every list member who motivates themselves to post a comment, there are 25 or more who just read and enjoy. I don't know the actual ratio, and anyway it varies a lot with the thread topic.
That's all I've got to say; I'm gonna back out crossing myself, and hope all y'all have a good time.
Little do you know... No, FRiend, that assumption is merely stupidity and/or hatred on the part of folks who dislike Apple, of whom there are a lot, and they're noisy, but that doesn't make them smart.
I run the Windows Ping List, BTW, and a number of Apple users also have Windows. So if all Apple users are gay, then so are a good number of Windows folks.
Overall, assuming you didn't just forget the /sarc tag, your "thought" is just, well, let's kindly say "in need of significant revision". :-)
Yeah, I get it - my main laptop is soon to be retired - But it's an Acer Aspire 7736z that's older than dirt. It's a big form factor laptop that I paid around $450 bucks for... Since then I've jacked up the RAM, replaced the hdd a couple times, upgraded the WLAN to n series, and probably put 3 keyboards on it... But it's been running like a champ all this time, and is still doing well.
But it never, or seldom leaves my home. I like it because I can move around and I am not tied to my desk - I can run everything VNC from here... Whether at my desk, or in my chair, or out on the porch. But it would not have lasted anywhere near this long had I been actually using it as a laptop, getting thrown around, started cold... and etc. In the mean time, my road box has been replaced 3 times or so - I can't tell you the cost there, because I buy my road boxes used or frankenstein them out of parts that I run into... But I'll bet those road boxes still don't add up to what you've got in that mac. And if I wreck one, I don't have to put out much to get it back.
Money wise it's probably comparable - but risk wise, threat of damage and theft, I have you beat, I think.
You're absolutely right.
Personally I favor carving the holes in the 80-column cards with my hunting knife. I've seen those fancy IBM 029 keypunches but I'm telling you, the guys who use those probably eat quiche, too.
I hope you aren't one of those...
What's so odd? Apple hardware runs Windows just fine. I'll bet it runs Windows 10 beautifully. :-)
In all seriousness, I have Windows 7 BootCamped onto both my Minis and my old MacBook, and I'm planning to upgrade the older Mini (a 2009 1.8GHz Core2 Duo with 4GB RAM) from 7 to 10 sometime in the near future. Only thing I'm not sure of is whether the older BootCamp will support it. The old Mini OS X side can't be upgraded past Lion... if not, then I'll have to do it on the newer one, which shouldn't be tough, as it's running Mavericks on the OS X side.
Anyway....
Are those Macs reakky running OS X in a Windows 10 conference? Whatever for? That's just silly. I'd rather believe it's Photoshopped. But my money is on BootCamp.
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