Apple Aces PCWorld’s Reliability And Satisfaction Survey Yet Again In 2011
The headlines for PC World’s 2011 reliability and satisfaction survey report articles, pretty much tell the tale:
“Desktop PC Reliability and Satisfaction: Dell and HP Home PCs Get Poor Grades… Readers gave better marks to Apple and Asus”
“Laptop Reliability and Satisfaction: MacBooks Rule”
“Tablet Reliability and Satisfaction: iPad Comes Out on Top”
“Smartphone Reliability and Satisfaction: iPhone Tops the List”
In short, Apple products once again mopped the floor with the PC competition in the estimation of this PC-oriented magazine’s readers, as they have so many times before.
In the survey category report articles, PCWorld’s Mark Sullivan fleshes out the headlines, observing with regard to desktop machines that “Apple ruled the desktop PCs category, with top marks in reliability, service, and features (from product design to ports and connectivity).” Runner-up was Asus, praised for the reliability, value, and low operating noise of its machines.
However, on reliability, Apple was “the runaway winner” with four above-average scores and an average score on the fifth, and in service and support for desktops, “Apple hogged all of the better-than-average ratings, sweeping the field and leaving the other four vendors to scrabble for what was left.”
Turning to notebooks, the predominance of survey respondents agreed that there’s nothing quite like a MacBook, giving these machines better-than-average scores on eight of PCWorld’s ten measures for durability, support, and most features aside from “performance for the price,” while Asus, got high marks for selling a lot of laptop for the money. Apple also led in laptop reliability, scoring a category-leading five for five, with Samsung and Toshiba tied for second, and Asus getting honorable mention here for a low proportion of significant problems and better-than-average overall owner satisfaction with reliability. Bringing up the reliabiltiy rear were Dell’s business laptops and HP’s home laptops
Apple’s MacBooks also shone with better-than-average scores on all four of our service and support measures.
In the tablet column, Sullivan reports that no Android slate could beat out the iPad in reliability or satisfaction with features, and the iPad remains miles ahead of the pack in durability, ease of use, and features such as battery life, screen quality, and overall speed as well, in fact, raking in almost all of the high scores in those areas, leaving the rest of the field saddled with average or below-average scores on PCWorld’s survey measures.
The only weak areas recorded for the iPad and iPad 2 were in Internet browsing (one suspects the lack of Flash support might have something to do with that), and one worse-than-average (and roundly deserved) rating for “available ports.” A perennial complaint by iPad owners (including this one) is the absence of a real USB port, and a SD Card slot would be nice too.
As for smartphones, PCWorld readers like their iPhones as well, an unusually high proportion of owners praising its durability, ease-of-use, design, and camera quality. Sullivan reports that HTC phones scored well too in those criteria, but readers had little good to say about LG and Samsung phones.
Apple collected plus marks on all four reliability criteria, and LG on two of the four. On ease of use, Apple was also the class of the field, the iPhone family earning five better-than-average ratings, and finished at the upper end on 10 of the 11 criteria for smartphone features. the iPhone family would have grabbed better-than-average scores across the board on our smartphone features, while Samsung and LG scraped bottom with seven negatives and no positives and with eight and none respectively, with Sullivan observing that the combination of an extra-large slice of the market and radiant customer reviews for Apple probably makes its rivals… look worse than they really are.
Another impressive showing for Apple again. Are we surprised?
For the full reports visit here:
http://www.pcworld.com/
