MacBook Pro and $400 Acer top list of most reliable Windows laptops
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If someone asked you what the two most dependable Windows laptops around were, what would you say? The 13-inch MacBook Pro and Acer’s dirt-cheap Acer Aspire E1-571? You’re either fibbing, or you got an early look at Soluto’s report on the most trouble-free notebooks, too. Soluto’s findings are backed up by tons of data its slick new remote support app has been gathering about customer’s systems during months of testing. It’s not necessarily a surprise to see the MacBook Pro at the top of the chart even though it’s not really a Windows laptop. It can run Windows just fine thanks to Boot Camp, and it’s a very well-built machine. For around $1,400, you’d certainly hope that your taking home a rock-solid piece of hardware, wouldn’t you? The Acer Aspire E1-571 is a much bigger surprise. Many folks thinkAcer systems are only noteworthy because they’re dirt cheap and available at just about every major retail store you walk in to. My own experience with the brand bears out Soluto’s findings, however. Despite their low price tag, the Acer laptops I’ve owned have always been very much trouble-free. And really, the E1-571 might deserve the top spot. When I spoke with Soluto, I asked whether the reliability scores were weighted for the amount of time spent actually running Windows. That matters, because a run-of-the-mill Acer is going to spend a lot more time in Windows than a MacBook Pro that’s built for OS X. More time in Windows equals time for a problem to rear its ugly head and report as much to Soluto. Right now, Soluto’s numbers aren’t weighted. In my mind, that at least makes the Acer tied for first. And yes, the E1-571 deserves bonus points because you can buy three of them for the same price as a single MacBook Pro. So what other systems made the list? A mix that’s sure to surprise a lot of folks. Two higher-end Ultrabooks broke the top ten. Dell’s sleek XPS 13 wound up in third while the Lenovo $1,100 Thinkpad Carbon X1 took the final spot. Four of the remaining spots were held by $500 Dell laptops: the Vostro 3560, Inspiron 14Z, Latitude E5530, and the Vostro 3460. Apple’s 15-inch Retina MacBook Pro and the Acer Aspire V3-771 also made the cut. How did Soluto calculate its rankings? By sifting through data for crashes, hangs, blue screens, and boot times. Information from more than 1.3 million boot-ups, 224,000 crashes, and 84,000 BSoDs was gathered over the course of three months from Soluto partners. In total, 150,000 individual laptops were tracked, and Soluto whittled that down to around 37,000. Those included 49 different models from top PC manufacturers, but clearly some fared better than others. Though Asus, HP, and Toshiba were included, none managed to sneak a single model into the top ten. Soluto’s study isn’t a flawless analysis by any stretch, but it was conducted on real Windows machines being used by real people. While it’s possible the Acer Aspire E1-571 performed better because all the people using it did nothing more than run ping in a command prompt, it’s safe to assume that they were doing the same kind of things you or I would do with a $400 laptop if we bought one. They say you get what you pay for — but after looking at Soluto’s numbers it looks like some Acer and Dell customers are getting quite a bit more than they bargained for… in a good way.
