Want the most reliable Windows PC? Buy a Mac (or maybe a Dell)

If you want a reliable Windows PC, maybe you should get a Mac.

That’s the conclusion of a new report released today by Soluto, which crunched the data from its cloud-based PC monitoring and management software to come up with a list of the 10 most reliable portable PCs you can buy today.

The most reliable Windows PC you can buy today, according to Soluto’s report, doesn’t come from one of the leading hardware OEMs. Instead, it’s built by Microsoft’s archrival Apple. (You'll have to use Apple's Boot Camp utility and buy your own Windows license to transform the Mac into a Windows PC.)

The report also provides a partial answer to the age-old question of whether you should use a vendor’s OEM image of Windows or wipe it and perform a clean installation.

Soluto’s database includes data gathered from millions of machines running Windows. For this study, the company chose a sample of data gathered in the first three months of 2013 from 150,000 portable PCs. They filtered the dataset so it includes only models available for purchase today, running Windows 7 or Windows 8.

That left a total of 49 models from a who’s who of hardware makers. The world’s leading PC OEM, HP, had the most entries on the list, followed in order by Lenovo, Dell, Samsung, ASUS, Acer, Toshiba, and Apple.

At the top of the Soluto list is the 13-inch MacBook Pro (mid-2012 model), which earned the best reliability score of the bunch. The score takes into account program crashes and hangs (events in which an application becomes nonresponsive for at least five seconds), average boot time, the number of background processes, and the number of BSODs (STOP errors, aka the “Blue Screen of Death”) per week.

Interesting article, any thoughts?

Want the most reliable Windows PC? Buy a Mac (or maybe a Dell) | ZDNet

A total waste!!!! Who would buy a Mac to degrade it to a Windows box?? Sure it runs better and all, but it's wasting all the power that the Macs have (and all your money you throw at it). While you surely can, don't means that you should, or it it's a good idea.

Now seriously, this paragraph cached my attention:

The secret of their success isn’t all that surprising. Both companies deliver relatively clean installations of Windows, with close attention paid to drivers. Dell includes minimal amounts of third-party software in its PCs, a practice that adds to the reliability of its products. By contrast, when I last looked at consumer PCs from HP and Samsung I found that crapware was a performance-sapping nightmare.

So, the best performing PCs are those with the lesser pre-installed crapware. Why this doesn't surprises me?
This reinforces my idea that a clean install is a MUST right after getting a computer with a pre-installed Windows.

These are all good points. I just thought it was an interesting article. This is a topic that will always go back and forth as long as there are Mac's and PC's in this world. I myself have a MacBook Pro with Mountain Lion, Lenovo T60 laptop with Windows 7 and a custom built desktop that I just recently installed Windows 8 on. So I guess you can say that I respect both sides of the table. Keep up the comments, this is good!

whs said:

The Macs use the same components as the PCs (CPUs, GPUs, RAM, etc). Where are they more powerful than a PC with the same specs.

It could be that Apple has better quality control and also a Windows installation on a Mac is usually without bloatware. But other than that I don't see any real difference except for the inflated price of a Mac.

+1

Totally agree!

Alejandro85 said:

A total waste!!!! Who would buy a Mac to degrade it to a Windows box??

Me!!! and it's certainly an upgrade......Mac OS is awful and but the Macbook air is a great bit of kit and that's why mine runs Windows 8.

Hi there
If I'm buying a Mac I can't see the point of running Windows on it unless I have to have windows for work purposes - then I'd run Windows in a VM.

Somebody once said it's a bit like putting a Saddle on to a Duck -- that doesn't turn it into a Horse.

I'd have bought a Mac in a shot if I thought they were good value - but IMO they aren't anything like the "Best Bang for Buck" and I don't really like the whole closed or proprietary system / environment that the Mac uses.

In any case if Windows doesn't run reliably on whatever piece of kit you are using then the chances are it's a hardware problem --there's just too many copies of Windows (all versions) all over the world that DO run 100% reliably for the OS to be considered as "Unstable" - even if a lot of versions were susceptible to Hacking.

Cheers
jimbo

lenovo all the way :)