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Failure Rate of PC Manufacturers? 75

Posted by Cliff from the stuff-that-would-be-nice-to-know dept.
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?"
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Failure Rate of PC Manufacturers? More

Failure Rate of PC Manufacturers?

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  • Pardon me for stating the obvious... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Monte ( 48723 ) on Wednesday August 10, 2005 @06:41PM (#13290052)
    ...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.

    • 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.
      Yeah, everybody knows there's only 80 bucks worth of steel in them ;-)
    • Deployment and provisioning costs are generally greater than the actual equipment. In some environments, after you factor in software, maintenance & installation, the real cost of a PC on a desk approaches $4,000 or more.

      Crappy hardware means more replacements, more downtime for workers and more time reimaging and coordinating the scheduling techs or CEs to replace broken equipment. That translates to more staff and more money.

      After you factor in salary, benefits, training, telecom costs and equipment,
      • Crappy hardware means more replacements, more downtime for workers and more time reimaging and coordinating the scheduling techs or CEs to replace broken equipment. That translates to more staff and more money.

        But doesn't the need for upgrading put the failure rate below the noise floor?

        Otherwise a 10 year old PC that was still working just fine would be an incredible savings to your company.

        As a doorstop, I guess. But I'm going to go out on a limb and assume you're replacing the old dinosaurs with newer, m
        • Upgrading actually doesn't cost alot in real terms, because you avoid having to maintain maintenance contracts for old equipment. Extending the maintenance contracts to 6-7 years easily approaches the cost of replacing the equipment.

          In the environment that I describe, staffing and keeping parts inventory for a repair depot for older, out of warranty hardware isn't feasible.

      • Re:Pardon me for stating the obvious... (Score:1, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward
        You're environment seems to be the extreme side of the spectrum. Most companys is this country don't even have 10,000 employees. Your figure of $4000 again is limited to your environment, and like most things everyone is different. We have almost exclusively Dell, and IBM equipment in the corporate offices. The only problem we see on workstations mostly is the hard drive failing. This goes for both brands. Whats funny is we have grown a lot, and the company used to be very cheap. All the old PC's wer
    • 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

      If you need redundancy, it's probably at a server level. Servers are not necessarily available at such cheap prices.

      For desktops, if the unit dies in 3 months then you can probably get a better unit at less cost, but you still have to have somebody paid to swap the machine/components and reinstall software as necessarily.

      I
    • but at these prices, who cares about failure rates?

      I do.

      I'm not saving any money by paying less for something, bringing it home/work or waiting for it to be shipped, plugging it in, having it either be DOA or worse dying soon after deployment, then ship the broken thing back, wait again for the replacement, reconfigure the box again (if it works) ... you get my point.

      I have recently gotten so pissed off at the lack of QA in electronics that I vent on whoever is in my way on the return process. I went off s
      • I remember when a floppy drive broke, you took it to someone who would actually fix it. The things were hand-assembled for the most part, used a good number of discrete (read: fixable) components, and were built like a brick outhouse.

        They also cost the better part of a grand apiece.

        So how much more are you willing to pay for quality?

  • This one is obvious... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Fortunato_NC ( 736786 ) <verlinh75 AT msn DOT com> on Wednesday August 10, 2005 @06:44PM (#13290072) Homepage Journal
    It's a "gentleman's agreement" among the top-tier PC makers. I won't make you show yours if you don't make me show mine. There is very little to gain, and a lot to lose, especially if you consider how malleable the definition of "failure" is in the PC market. User deletes system files and renders PC unbootable? Chalk it up as another failure!

  • Consumer reports (Score:3, Informative)

    by A nonymous Coward ( 7548 ) * on Wednesday August 10, 2005 @06:45PM (#13290077)
    Consumer Reports publishes rankings of reported defects by brand for a zillion product categories, including PCs and, I think, printers, scanners, whatnot. It comes out once a year or so. I have a subscription, so I don't know how non-members can get access, but the magazine and web access are relatively cheap. They only cover the top brands, and they only report what their surveys have collected, so it may not be as double-blind and objective as one could wish. It is probably also not directly comparable to your data.
    • if you go to consumerreports.com, you can get access to all their ratings - you do have to purchase a membership, but at $4.95/month, it's not a bad premium at all if you just want to do a little quick research...

  • why not? (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    the failure rate of a machine is more dependent on the environment. if it's extremely dusty, fans clog and processors overheat. if you restart the machine a lot, it will probably fail sooner than if you leave it on all the time (or so they say). if you expose it to children (or noobs) it will fail sooner.

    how do you compare an [insert high quality mfgr] box located in a kintergarten library (dusty + children) to a no name box used by post docs in a climate controlled research lab?

    all the major manufacture
    • I get the idea but... post-docs are usually worse than children.
      They download anything, don't give a darn about security, and are knowledgeable and proud enough to do real damage. :-)
      • You tell no lies. I used to do basic IT stuff for a University. It was simply amazing the crap that they pulled thinking they knew what they were doing. We were cleaning up computers of junk all the time, and still re-imaging them once every 3-4 months. Nothing short of Deep Freeze will stop those idiots.

  • Time-span? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by azrane2005 ( 860037 )
    I wonder, if this information were to become public, how long after it's out of the box are we talking about? First boot? 1 year? And how long until it's obsolete?

    Personally, I've found that Compaq/HP systems more often than not have problems right out of the box (or right after the system restore, as it were), while Dells have a pretty good run, until the end user mucks it up with malware. I haven't had too much experience with Gateway systems to get an idea about their outcome.

    • Re:Time-span? (Score:4, Informative)

      by EricV314a ( 581711 ) <eric_v&swbell,net> on Wednesday August 10, 2005 @09:57PM (#13291202)
      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
      • I was unaware IBM still made consumer PCs. The only IBM machines I've seen are at least 10 years old.

        I think I know why nobody has brought in a server. They are either tech-saavy enough to know how to fix their problem, or know someone that is, either in the IT dept. of their workplace, or through other channels.

        the failures are usually accessories or minor components, drives, memory failure, cpu failure, bad cables, etc.

        I wish I could see something along this line. Just about all the systems that ha
    • I've found that Compaq/HP systems more often than not have problems right out of the box

      My experience with Compaq/HP is exactly the opposite - 99.9% of the time they just work, and continue to almost forever.

      Of course, that 0.1% of the cases where they don't work are the Presario crap, but the Deskpro and server-class machines are rock-solid.
  • Those were the days. PC Magazine would review 50 PC's, from ATR to Dell, Polywell to Gateway. Big names, small names. They ran application benchmarks and you could see which systems were the fastest. They also included information such as failure rate and wait times for calling tech support.

    These days, with 'web magazines', a PC comparison has 5 PC's and a paragraph or two about each one.

    Of course, magazines weren't perfect. The top rated PC's were often the most advertised. Manufacturers probably got smart

  • Consumer reports says: (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 10, 2005 @07:07PM (#13290249)
    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%
    • Come on, Gateway, almost 1 in 4 desktops with repairs or serious problems? Compaq/HP, IBM and eMachines with around 1 in 5? The numbers don't look any better on the laptop side, once you factor in that a broken laptop generally has fewer parts a user can easily replace than a desktop.

      If I ever needed ammo to prove that building it yourself is better whenever possible, this is it. Although I'd like to see motherboard failure rates, also, and not just reported by the manufacturer, because hardly anyone reall

      • I self-built my current Althon64 home PC and at the weekend one of the tabs the CPU cooler attaches to snapped, cooler flew off with enough force to pull the CPU out of it's socket.

        I'd say that's a pretty "serious problem", and it's not like it was a cheap generic board either - it's an MSI K8N with the stock AMD retail cooler. Been in place just over a year (2 days past warranty!), system not moved or disturbed in that time.

        I'm wondering how affected those numbers were by large batches of faulty compo

    • So, Gateway, HP/Compaq are the worst on both revieews I'm not totally surprised. I'm also not surprised that Toshiba came in on the top for laptops... Pretty much consistent with my (relatively limited) experience.
      .... Of course, this also depends on what is meant by 'serious problems', since I'm mostly looking for hardware 'problems', and some of those 'serious problems' could, conceivably include things like a wonky Windows install.

      It is, however, nice to see Apple on the top of both surveys. Even th

      • My experience with Toshiba was anything but good. I had the Portege P2000 sub-notebook, and in two years time I went through four hard drives, three motherboards, two keyboards and two glidepoints. And I pretty much used it as a desktop replacement!

        All covered by warranty of course, and Toshiba insisted that this was completely normal. They must have lost thousands on that sale.

        Probably a very atypical experience, but I'm not trying a Toshiba any time soon. I went IBM Thinkpad from that point.
        • Sometime thru that experience, I would have started asking for a whole-body reeplacement. You obviously got a seriously bad apple.
          • No, it was a Toshiba.
          • Don't think I didn't. Every single time I asked for a replacement, but the shop that actually repaired it was not the retailer, all they could do was fix the problems.

            So I went to the retailer and personally spoke with their Toshiba rep, who said that in his many years as such he had never heard of Toshiba replacing a computer.

            Problem was I bought it through my business, and B2B means that your "consumer rights" are basically none...
            • Http://www.broken-toshiba.com is available...

              Either that, or ask them for the phone number for the nearest IBM marketing rep. That would have probably lit a fire. I'm sure that IBM or Compaq would have been happy to take the laptop and details for a replacement....

              (I can be a vicious bastard when pushed).

    • How many are physical defects vs. user incompetence vs. software issues (both bad/deteriorating software and viruses/malware (which could also be user incompetence))?
    • Not surprised that Gateway's failure rate is so high. I had three 6-10 month old systems go across my bench with fried power packs. Wayy underrated for P4s: 200 watt! I put 300s and 350s into the systems and haven't heard nothing but good news on those systems.

      Apple, no major surprise there.. I heard about their power packs on the whitebox IMacs being a fire hazard. Their current problem is video processor failures and LCD issues.

      Dell, well, what I can I say? They buy Intel boards and their chips.. Majorit
    • I have a feeling that this is unqualified failure rate
      meaning a bad keyboard or mouse counts the same as bad cpu or mainboard
    • Those numbers are probably based upon survey results from consumers or support calls, so I wouldn't give too much creedence to them.

      Consumers aren't going to be able to distinguish hardware problems from software ones.

      I'd be more interested in seeing warranty claim data from business customers. I think that actual hardware failures within a 4-year cycle for IBM/HP/Dell "business" PCs would be somewhere in the 3-5% range.
      • But aren't computers made for consumers to use? For the vast majority of us, it is insignificant whether we are left without our computers due to a vga or a m/b failure.
        • They are, but the "consumer" lines of HP, IBM, Dell, etc aren't the same as the "business" computers. Most companies outsource manufacturing of consumer PCs, particuarly retail lines to companies like Flextronics.

          There are other differences too... comsumer PCs will include Windows XP Home and can't join a domain. You also usually get a shorter warranty and different software load.

          The business PCs focus on stability for drivers and common, high quality parts. IBM guarantees driver compatability for all PCs m
    • Except that the HP failure rate is too low (i.e I was seeing 50% failure out of the box.)

      Toshiba is too high. I've been lucky and seen 0% there.

      I wonder why NCR didn't make the list? We were seeing over 80% failure there.
    • IBM: I Bought a Mistake.
      • IBM: I Blame Microsoft.
        IBM: Inferior But Marketable?
        IBM: I Broke Mine
        IBM: Infernal Business Machine
        IBM: Intentionally Brain-damaged Machinery
        IBM: It's Being Mended
        IBM: Inmense Ball of Muck
        IBM: I Believe in Memorex
        IBM: It's Better than Macintosh!
        IBM: Idiots Built Me
        IBM: Intense Bowel Movement
        IBM: I've Been Mislead
        IBM: It's Better Manually
        IBM: Infinitly Better Macintosh
        IBM: Indefinitly Boggled Machine
        IBM: I Bought a Mac
        IBM: I Bought Macintosh
        IBM: I'll Buy Macintosh
        IBM: I've Been Moved
        IBM: I've Been Mugged
        IBM:
    • what about hard disks?

  • Ask Gartner (Score:3, Informative)

    by EvilMagnus ( 32878 ) on Wednesday August 10, 2005 @07:25PM (#13290360)
    They have reports that cover this sort of thing. It costs money, but they get the data straight from the horse's mouth, as it were.

    Of course, if you're just a podunk little outfit that they think will redistribute this stuff at a drop of a hat, they may refuse to sell it to you. But it can't hurt to ask.

  • Well, they're cheap, but.... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Knara ( 9377 ) on Wednesday August 10, 2005 @07:37PM (#13290444)
    The generic answer seems to be, from my experience, that the chance that some computer will fail to the point of not POSTing during their warranty period is upwards of 60-70% with corporate desktop machines (think Dell Optiplexes and the like). The Gartner reports could be helpful if you can afford them, but what might also be useful is if the articles you find from the past show a downward trend in reliability from the big boys (which seems be the case from my experience, at least), and a steadily higher or improving trend in reliability from your comp.
  • PCWorld Magazine (and their corresponding website) hold an annual survey of reliability and customer satisfaction of the major PC brands.

    No link here, as it's been a few years since I have subscribed to the (dead tree version of the) magazine. Google is your friend, though.
    • Don't listen to PC World. The biggest advertisers get the best reviews.

      Case in point: a few years back, Dell had ads all over their magazine, and won almost every review. I remember one particular comparison between a Dell and another brand - the second brand won the competition in just about every respect...but somehow the Dell got to be the PC World winner. Another example, when they do their annual "survey" of support quality, Dell was always a step above everyone else, and even when the support quali

  • when i worked at... (Score:2, Informative)

    by bonezed ( 187343 )
    Acer AU we had an average failure rate of 3%

    emphasis on average

    sometimes we had items with 10% failure, but usually most things were like 1 or 2%

    not that it seemed like that when working helldesk

  • Check any issue of Consumer Reports that reviews PCs. They have a chart ranking the relative failure rates of the different manufacturers.

  • Google for "success rates"... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by bscott ( 460706 ) on Wednesday August 10, 2005 @09:54PM (#13291188)
    Nobody wants to publish failure rates - even if they're low, it still sounds bad. Try looking for "success" or "satisfaction" rates instead! Remember, marketing people just don't think like we do...

    (back when I worked in the repair depot, I remember Packard Bells were approaching a 50% failure rate. Then they merged with NEC - still not sure who got the worst of that deal, given the crap PCs NEC used to ship...)
    • I worked at a place that sold the first retail PC under $500 in college. Some Packard Bell 300Mhz Cyrix thing.

      Our store sold about 3,000 of them (they were stacked in a big pyramid in the middle of the store and sold out), and ended up getting over 1,200 back due to defects of some sort.

      We actually rented a warehouse to handle the repair of them, and while trying to cannibalize parts (as getting warranty parts took about 3 months) we noticed that each machine had different parts. Some had top of the line me

  • White Box (Score:2, Insightful)

    by tengu1sd ( 797240 )
    As a general rule any of channel market-teers will ship failed systems, dodge service agreements and force you to support the systems with service agreements. With a Titanium support contract you'll have to play phone menu checklist with a an in country phone tree. Same day service means you can call us today. Next day shipping isn't.

    For the general desk top including small office servers, find a local white box builder who can churn out systems. Specify motherboard and CPU. No the shop won't have 7x

    • Re:White Box (Score:3, Informative)

      by duffbeer703 ( 177751 )
      Even a small business can pay Dell another $60 for a "Gold" contract and get a reasonably competent tech within 2-5 minutes.

      Bigger customers will have a dedicated rep, and will be able to just order replacement parts.

      White box builders are a fucked business model... most can't afford to service customers with 50+ workstations.

      • Re:White Box (Score:3, Interesting)

        by tengu1sd ( 797240 )
        My point is that even with a Gold service contract your company staff will still wind up servicing the box and telephone troubleshooting to your vendor's script of the day. Better to have a local parts stock than to waste the time with a big company. If it's under service you get it swapped right there, if you need a new one, it's in stock and in hand. Your tech staff will wind dealing with the problem, why pay extra for scripted support?

        At my last job we had 2 white box shops down the road. We picked

    • Honestly Dell at least has been pretty good at getting parts out the door, as long as the order is in before 3-4pm the previous day it shows up next day, and early next day at that. Every once in a great while there is a backorder, and it takes them two-three days.

      IBM servers hehe has this funny policy in that they only promise tech on site within four hours, the part? well the part can take a few days. Oh so fun.

      HPaq, bah they try, ... sort of.

      In the end the solution is to have hot spares. One per few hund

  • Tandem FT (Score:3, Interesting)

    by rlp ( 11898 ) on Thursday August 11, 2005 @08:52AM (#13293670)
    When I worked at Tandem in Austin, all systems were built, run through a complete set of diagnostics and soak testing before shipment. The systems were designed as fault-tolerant and sold mostly to the telecom industry. The goal was zero defects and to NEVER ship a DOA system. Tandem's systems were expensive, and the company competed on quality, not on price. Need I add that Tandem no longer exists as an independent company. (Bought by Compaq, which was bought by HP).
  • When I ran a PC manufacturing company some years ago we would release those figures if anyone asked for them. Pretty pointless, as people had nothing to compare them with, and as has already been pointed out, the figures are influenced by the user and the environment.

  • Huh? (Score:2)

    by CMiYC ( 6473 )
    What do you consider a failure?

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