Fujitsu LifeBook Notebooks Receive High Acclaim for Reliability in PC Magazine Survey

Fujitsu LifeBook® notebooks are some of the most reliable in the industry, according to the newly released 17th Annual Reader Satisfaction Survey published by PC Magazine. Fujitsu captured the highest reliability score among all Windows-based notebooks, tying IBM, and had the lowest percentage of notebooks needing repairs.

The magazine surveyed more than 8,000 readers, asking them to describe their experiences with desktops, notebooks and servers that they use at home and at work. Leading notebook vendors, including Apple, Dell, IBM, Hewlett-Packard and Toshiba, were represented.

Readers awarded Fujitsu with a “Very Good” overall rating and a “Very Good” reliability score for its LifeBook notebooks. In the “percent needing repairs” category, Fujitsu received the lowest score with only 13 percent of users reporting their LifeBook notebook needed repair—the best score of any Windows-based notebook vendor evaluated.

The full results appear in the August 17, 2004 issue of PC Magazine and online at http://www.pcmag.com/sr.

“We are very pleased about the results of PC Magazine’s reader survey,” said Richard McCormack, vice president of product and solutions marketing for Fujitsu Computer Systems. “The true measure of a product is based upon successful customer experiences. Notebook users have confirmed: Fujitsu is an industry leader when it comes to quality and reliability. It’s nice to be recognized for all our hard work.”

Fujitsu tightly integrates every aspect in the design, manufacturing and service of its products. This practice allows the company to deliver solutions that adhere to the highest standards of quality and reliability. Its award-winning LifeBook notebooks are no exception. The line includes a wide range of designs—from desktop replacements to ultraportable systems with touch screens.

 

Oh, yeah, I am feeling really warm and fuzzy about my N5010 purchase, and not just because the palm rests get hot [ ]. For my $, I want reliability. Nice to see that I got it.

 

Finally, more support for my arguments in favor of Fujitsu!

Editor in Chief http://www.bargainPDA.com and http://www.SPOTstop.com

 

I hate to say, but it's a really laughable article. This is a user survey, so all the numbers come from the "impressions" of users, not down right "reliability" numbers, which is what really counts in deciding whether you will get a lousy laptop or not. The only one columne that is truly unbiased is the "percent needing repairs". The "Tech Support" & "Repair" columns are something you can take it with a grain of salt and realizing that there is personal "pickiness" affecting the results. The rest are just junk.

Why? OK, I'll tell you why. Take a real life example from my experience of Air Force's love affair with their F-16 engines. The F-16 is either powered by a GE or a PW (Pratt-Whitney) engine. Now, you go to a base where their F-16 using PW engine, all the ground crew hate their PW engine because that's what make them to work up all night. Going to a base where F-16 using GE engine, guess what, they hate GE engine. You go to Air Force's logistic HQ and look at the MTBF (Mean Time Between Failure) and Unscheduled Maintenance Rate, well, both engine perform about the same. Getting the picture? Both engines are as reliable as each other, but the maintenance crew that lost their sleep on one particular engine is just going to regard the one engine in their hands badly and ASSUME the other one "it can't be as bad as this one, right?"

So who is more reliable? On a grant scale, both are really about the same, the difference is too small to say one engine is really better than the other. However, if you do a survey like what PC Magazine just did, PW is going to score badly as far as reliablity goes. Why? well, more of their engines in Air Force inventory were older models and not really designed with "ease of maintenence" in mind, so when a problem does crop up, it gives ground crew more trouble to actually fix it. As a result, you are going to have more people holding a grudge against PW engine, even though they don't really have more problems than GE's. Of course, ease of maintenence is important too, but it's not going to show up in a simplified survey. You only know that after interviewing several Master Sergeants that have the experiences with all variants of engines and giving you detail comparison.

With this kind of mind set, the only true factor that determines whether your laptop is going to have problem, aka RELIABILITY or QUALITY, is the column of "percent needing repair". Going to Tech Support & Repair to see the "ease of maintenance" aspect and a lot of numbers are unavailable. These values are going to be affected by human factors to start with, and the fact that they are not showing up just degrade the "reliability" of this survey. Finally, the rest in the survey are the result of experiences from these three primary columns PLUS more human factors. They are not as important as the primary drivers to start with, and worse is the fact that the data in the primary drivers are missing. So, just throw them away.

From this survey, I will HIGHLY recommend Fujitsu, SONY, & IBM, as they are the consistent "trouble free" leader. [ ] Tech support & repairs? Well, not enough data to sum up a useful recommendation here, but if you have a trouble-free lappy and you don't need to know how good they are anyway. [8D]