back to article Asus pulps Apple in hardware reliability survey

Asus has stolen the top spot from Apple in a report that assesses the reliability of top PC manufacturer’s machines. Put together by US PC repair and support firm Rescuecom, the league table was topped by Asus with a whopping 972 reliability points. Apple, now in second place, scored just 324 points. Rescuecom’s scores are …

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  1. Mark

    Ur...?

    So, let me get this straight: Asus and Lenovo were joint first place - that would put Apple in third place then?

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Stop

    Flaw

    It's not possible to be sure the calls are about hardware only and even then, the playing field is not even. Trying to connect an instrument with Garage Band something people will try on a Mac - it would generate "hardware" calls but PC platforms will not have any like this.

    Asus indeed. Perhaps Apricot come top because 0/0 = infinity ?

  3. Jonathan White
    Thumb Down

    Hold on..

    The data is made up of a statistical analysis of how many support calls they get over a given period factoring in the relative market share of each vendor? That's an utterly idiotic mechanism. Apple run their own in house (or more accurately instore) support system and a lot of people who buy EeePC's tend to be the techy types who can and do fix stuff themselves. Just as two examples that could skew the figures. In a lot of cases, they're using stats from the self-selected group of people too thick to figure out how to get support without having to pay extra for it.

    How on earth is this considered useful information?

    Jon

  4. dave
    Flame

    Who fixes broken ASUS machines anyway?

    Let's face it, if your ASUS or your Lenovo goes wrong, you bin it and buy a new one. Hence no reported failure. If your MacBook Pro goes wrong, you get it fixed, and Apple get another minus point for making a machine you want to keep.

  5. pfuey

    Pure and utter crap

    This article can't pass the straight face test. Anyone with only just a modicum of knowledge of the current computerscape can't read this article with a straight face. Proof The Register doesn't do journalism but merely sensationalism.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Jobs Horns

    But the real place for apple

    Is right at the bottom, given that 99% of their repairs are dealt with in (Apple) store and so won't go anywhere near 3rd party shops like this

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Dead Vulture

    You can tell Apple are involved in these statistics

    To snip from the article:

    "Asus has stolen the top spot from Apple. Apple, now in second place, scored just 324 points. But the real winner is Lenovo, which scored 348 points this time around, just ahead of Apple's 324 points."

  8. Psycho Flump
    Thumb Down

    Asus?

    I'm surprised Asus came top. I've recently sampled their customer service when my battery expired after only three months. I knew it was the battery as I'd tried it in another machine. Problem was I couldn't actually speak to anyone but some kind of glorified tea boy who knew jack shit about anything. Ended up sending the whole thing back and thus had to reinstall everything when it was returned. Also the online returns form allows something like 150 characters to outline the problem. It's put me off ever buying anything anus branded again.

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Flame

    Let's be fair here...

    Let's be fair here.

    This is based on number of support requests, not the actual failure rate, so we must take into account the actual userbase.

    A lot of the purchasers of thinkpads and asus laptops are fairly familiar with computer stuff.

    The cupertino-based fruit-case distributor of gloss, has what kind of customers again?

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Re: Asus?

    >Also the online returns form allows something like 150 characters to outline the problem. It's put me off ever buying anything anus branded again.

    Baterry buggered.

    Really, I don't know what you're complaining about.

  11. James Carter
    Unhappy

    My MacBook Pro is a real POS

    Tis true; only Apple really supports Apple products. So most of their support traffic is entirely under the radar. I do know this: The MBP that I am typing this on is a stylishly designed and extremely poorly engineered product. At less than 20 months old the MoBo ("Logic Board" in Apple land parlance) failed completely and cost me over $1,130US to repair it. Part of the LED screen illumination has fail giving a non-uniform image. And the wireless "Airport" Adapter is sporadic at best and currently disabled. Any computer that generates enough heat to create a surface that is too hot to touch is certainly operating with inadequate thermal control and is not working within the temperature specifications of a majority of its components.

    This was the first and will be the very last Apple product that I ever buy.

  12. Kanhef
    Thumb Down

    flaws

    Not every call is about a hardware problem. Did they remember to remove all the software and PEBCAK calls before doing their analysis? It looks like they also used sales figures for 'market share', not the number of computers in use. That will throw off their results, unless they only take support calls within 90 days of purchase (in which case they'd really only be measuring short-term reliability).

  13. Lennart Sorensen

    @Phycho Flump

    Well in Canada the Asus support is superb. I have had a laptop get a battery replacement and a couple of small issues fixed and the whole thing returned in 24 hours. They were perfectly willing to fedex a new battery and have me return the old one if that was all that it needed.

    I suspect the support varies between countries though.

  14. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Up

    Huh?

    On what planet does Apple have a 6.8PC marker share - it isn't Earth. Toshiba produce more PCs in a month than Apple have made in a year....yet have a smaller market share according to these guys.

    ...not to mention the slightly inconvenient problem that Apple's involvement in manufacture ends at the drawing pretty pictures stage and until recently it was Asus made the MacBook. Current Apple range is built by Quanta - who also make the buffiest Asus lines like later EEE PCs and better laptops.

  15. Tom Maddox Silver badge
    Jobs Horns

    No surprises

    Well, this article brought out the fanboi community in a hurry. My personal, anecdotal experience is that Mac hardware reliability is subpar, especially where laptops are concerned. IBM's laptop reliability used to be quite good, but then Lenovo bought the PC division, so it looks like Lenovo have finally caught back up.

  16. Anonymous Coward
    Jobs Horns

    No Suprise

    Apple are more interested flogging bling phones.

  17. Sarah Baucom
    Stop

    @Huh?

    I'm pretty sure those numbers come from Earth, where Apple sold more machines in 2008 than Toshiba did. Not sure how that equates to Toshiba making more computers in a month than Apple does in a year, unless most Toshiba machines go unsold. If that's the case, I'd have to question Toshiba's reasons for manufacturing 12 times as many machines as they're able to sell.

  18. Johan Bastiaansen
    Thumb Down

    Top HP support question ? ? ?

    I know what that question is: "I just put a memory stick in the USB slot, but the machine just sits there like a brick".

    Default installation by HP is such that there are no available drive letters for memory stick. Clever eh ?

  19. Stephen

    How about also remembering

    That ASUS is one of the major systems builders for Apple. Apple doesn't actually build any machines any more, it just specs a system, designs a case and farms the work out. It doesn't surprise me when this leads to variable results for them as they swap suppliers with model updates.

  20. s
    Thumb Up

    @Phycho Flump & @Lennart Sorensen

    I had to use Asus support for one of my machines and I have to say it was terrible. They Didn't listen to the problem and returned it to me in the same state it left (albiet with completely new (though not required) internals).

    They picked the machine up, replaced the MoBo etc without questions and got it back to me in less than the time they originally stated - all good. The fact that the drivers were causing the problem is still annoying though.

    On the other other hand I've owned 5 Asus laptops since 2002 (3 top laptops and a couple of eees) and I have not had a hardware problem with any of them yet. The one I purchased in 2002 is now enjoying retirement at my parents house where a P4 2GHz still has use :)

  21. Anonymous Coward
    Alert

    Whether the report is accurate or not....

    ... who knows but I'm sure Acer's support didn't do well. Had to deal with them on a simple issue. Heard a story that Acer wouldn't support a Vista RTM system if it went to SP1. I contacted them and got the run around as I know someone with the same issue. Even a Microsoft advisor found it odd. Wouldn't touch an Acer unless it was the last brand on earth.

    Apple must have good support. They are selling all these buggy and expensive products.

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