Highlights From Our Survey
:) Boutique desktop makers (Cyberpower, Velocity Micro, and Systemax) enter list with decent ratings.
:( Average reliability of Windows desktops and notebooks is down.
:) Notebooks and printers less than a year old have higher overall and reliability scores than older ones.
:( Desktop vendors eMachines and Lenovo drop from 2006.
:) Gateway support, repairs, and recommendations for notebooks all improved from 2006.
We admit it. Sometimes from year to year, not much will change amid the scores the big-name PC vendors receive in this survey. Readers shook things up this year, however, adding companies that have never made the desktop list before (Acer, Cyberpower, and Velocity Micro) and adding back one that didn't make the cut last year (Systemax) despite a good showing in 2005.
Velocity Micro is the company to watch. It swept in with the highest overall score among Windows PC manufacturers, 8.6 out of 10. Systemax also did very well with an 8.2. Only Apple and Gateway managed to keep the same overall score as last year.
Every other company from the 2006 list fell in terms of service and reliability, a couple of them substantially: eMachines went from 7.8 to 7.4, Lenovo from 7.4 to 7.1. They had the worst scores in the group. Why are readers so grumpy this year? Simply put, more and more Windows PCs require tech support just to set them up properly or, worse yet, require a full-on repair.
Still, the average overall score for Windows-based desktop PC makers is 7.8 out of 10, the same as last year's. That's down from 7.9 in 2005. The reason the average stayed up is that new entries like Velocity Micro and Systemax kept it up. Without them, it would have been 7.6. (For this score we don't count the nonbranded, self-built PCs or clone/white-box PCs.)
Of course, no Windows machine comes close to Apple's 9.1 overall score. But even Apple was down from last year in just about every category except technical support, which went up to 8.4 points. Apple's high marks extend even into areas we don't have room to print charts for, such as the 85 percent rating for the reliability of software included on the computer (aah, iLife), the 93 percent score for new desktops working right out of the box, and the 9 out of 10 score for the attitude of the tech-support provider. Even the Apple.com Web site gets kudos for how much information it makes available.
The big loser this year, at least compared with previous years, is Sony. Last year you gave the company a Readers' Choice recommendation, but the drops in score and increases in repairs needed pulled it out of the running for 2007. Readers didn't find the software Sony includes as reliable (though Sony wasn't alone there; HP's software is also considered less reliable). Sony also didn't get enough responses for desktops less than a year old to be included in that part of the chart, which made us wonder if the Japanese giant is losing market share.—next: Reliability >
