Mac Tops Rescuecom's Reliability List

According to Rescuecom Corp.'s third annual reliability report, Apple doubled its 2007 score on its way to once again taking the top spot for best overall reliability. The company beat out Panasonic, Lenovo, Toshiba and Hewlett-Packard, eclipsing its nearest competitor by more than 200 points.

The Report calculates the "Reliability Score" for each computer vendor based on the calculated difference between overall U.S. market share, from January 2008 to October 2008, and the percentage of calls requesting service received by RESCUECOM's call center. Higher scores indicate that fewer calls for service were received for the specific computer vendor versus expected levels based upon market share estimates (scores are in parentheses).

1. Apple (700)
2. Panasonic (489)
3. Lenovo (393)
4. Toshiba (299)
5. HP (184)

Reliability Scores are based on a comparison of RESCUECOM's call center data with IDC's third quarter U.S. PC Shipments report: November 2008. Other notable findings from the data include:

• Apple ran away with the number-one spot in the reliability survey once again, beating its closest competitor by more than 200 points.
• In a climate in which notebook sales overtook desktop sales, Panasonic made huge market share gains while keeping reliability high - thereby rocketing the company to the number-two spot in the ranking.
• Toshiba, not even a performer last year, took the number-four spot, beating the next closest vendor by more than 100 points.
• HP, also not a performer last year, took fifth place, removing DELL from the top 5 reliability report.
• Lesser-known brands and generic PC's performed notably lower than better-known brands.

Notably absent from the list was Dell. This year the company fell off Rescuecom's list for the first time, even though it improved its score, from 2007's 94 to this year's 129. Rescuecom CEO David Milman said, "It's not that Dell dropped, but that some very strong players -- like Panasonic and Toshiba -- came in, Dell's problem was that it didn't improve as much as [its] competitors." Dell has been slowly slipping down Rescuecom's list, two years ago they were placed fourth, while last year the claimed the fifth spot.