In our desktop PC ratings, Apple received better-than-average ratings on every question we polled users about – perhaps the best showing by any company in any product category in our survey. Meanwhile, Acer and eMachines repeated their shared (distant) second-place finish of a year ago, but with one above-average rating each instead of three each.
The big surprise this year was the improvement by Sony, which had been the worst performer in our desktops category last year, collecting three worse-than-average ratings and no better-than-average ones. This year, the tide turned in Sony’s favor: The company received average marks on every measure for which we received enough data, except on the “any core component problem” criterion. On that measure, Sony earned an above-average rating.
At the bottom of the list, CyberPower, Gateway, and HP had pitiful scores. Gateway concentrated its three subpar ratings on service and support measures; while both of CyberPower’s negatives came on reliability measures (the vendor didn’t draw enough responses on the service and support criteria to receive ratings on them). HP’s problems were more general: It collected four below-average ratings on measures ranging from general reliability issues to excessive hold times.
Even though laptops have tricky assembly issues, limited space for components, and various risks associated with being carried around, readers in this year’s survey rated desk tops as being significantly less reliable than laptops. Overall, users had 15 to 30 percent mare problems with desktops than with laptops, depending on which reliability metric we asked about: the disparity may reflect vendors’ efforts to cut all possible corners to keep desktop costs at rock bottom.