Technology's Most and Least Reliable Brands in '09

PC World - Every year, consumers purchase millions of computers and peripherals. And every year, millions of those devices break down.

For anyone who plans to buy a piece of hardware, the overall reliability of a vendor's products and the quality of its service are important considerations. Unfortunately, much of the information that people use in deciding which product to buy is fragmentary and anecdotal--not the kind of data you'd want to base a three- or four-figure decision on.

To obtain some hard data about which vendors have done the best job over the past year, we recently polled approximately 45,000 visitors to PCWorld.com, asking them about the mechanical soundness of their tech products--laptop PCs, desktop PCs, HDTVs, digital cameras, and printers--and about the quality of the tech support they received when those products required service. For similar evaluations of smartphone vendors, see "The Smartphones You Can Rely On."

Perhaps the most surprising thing about our most recent survey results is how closely consumer opinions about reliability and service this year match those we reported last year (see "Product Reliability and After-Sale Service, 2008").

Once again, Apple and Canon were far and away the favorite brands in our survey, earning high marks across the board on measurements of both reliability and service. Apple won top honors in notebooks and desktop PCs, while Canon dominated the field in printers and cameras.

But a number of other companies made impressive gains. Vendors that enjoyed markedly improved ratings in their survey results over the past year include Toshiba among laptop makers, Sony in desktop PCs, Brother for printers, Pioneer among HDTV brands, and Nikon in cameras.

At the other end of the ladder, our list of cellar dwellers did not change much, either. Across the board and in every category we tracked where it had a significant presence, Hewlett-Packard ranked as the least-reliable manufacturer in the survey. Among manufacturers that experienced momentum in the wrong direction were Dell (which took a disappointing tumble in both laptop and desktop PC reliability), Sony (which sank in televisions), and Fujifilm (in cameras).

After watching HP turn in dismal results on our survey for the past several years, we asked what was happening. Why were our readers rating a top-tier company as subpar in reliability and support, year after year?

Jodi Schilling, vice president of HP's American customer support operations, says the company is aware of the issues and took measures in 2009 to rectify the situation. Schilling says, "We're trying to move to a leadership position in service and support, and that's taking a large investment and some time."