Electronista Coverage on the 2011 Computer Reliability Report!

HP takes rare lead over Apple in Rescuecom ranks

HP takes rare lead over Apple in Rescuecom ranks

A rare and possibly one-off upset occurred on Tuesday as HP scored higher than Apple in Rescuecom's reliability charts. Judging its scores on the Windows PC builder's estimated 25 percent market share relative to the 7.2 percent share of calls Rescuecom received, it gave HP a score of 346 where Apple was a distant second at 179, making up an estimated 8.8 percent of the market but 4.9 percent of the calls. Lenovo's ThinkCentre and ThinkPad lines scored 177, while one-time leader ASUS fell to 144. Toshiba trailed behind at 96 and had disproportionately more calls (8.8 percent) than it did market share (8.4 percent).

ASUS' rise in market share may have come at the cost of quality, the third-party support firm said. Dell was too low to be included in the top five.

It's not certain that the results are an accurate reflection of reliability levels. Actual, end user surveys have usually put HP well behind most others. Cheap construction and poorly outsourced support have left it trailing behind Apple, which often leads in both reliability and after-sale help. Rescuecom's own results have usually shown HP lagging.

Rescuecom's nature as an outside agency may play a role. Customers have historically been more likely to call the manufacturer in the event of obvious hardware failures, more common for HP, where they reserve third-party help for either software issues or subtler hardware problems. No explanation was given for the blip.