Who makes the most reliable laptops?

There's nothing worse than buying new gear that malfunctions shortly after you purchase it. If you're in the market for a new laptop, the warranty company SquareTrade released a research paper late last year analyzing failure rates for over 30,000 laptops covered by their warranties. The report is full of good information worth considering before your next big purchase.

The highlights of the study:

Nearly 1 in 3 Laptops fail over 3 years: Looking at the first 3 years of ownership, 31% of laptop owners reported a failure to SquareTrade. Two-thirds of this failure (20.4%) came from hardware malfunctions, and one-third (10.6%) was reported as accidental damage.

Netbooks are a lot more failure prone than laptops: Netbooks are projected to have a 20% higher failure rate from hardware malfunctions than more expensive laptop computers.

ASUS and Toshiba were the most reliable manufacturers: They have fewer than 16% having a hardware malfunction over 3 years. It's also perhaps a little surprising that a company like Apple, known for its hardware, still ends up a percentage point or two worse off than companies like ASUS and Toshiba when it comes to laptop malfunction rates.

via SquareTrade