For many years, Apple insisted on focusing its marketing campaign around its rivalry with Microsoft. The PC vs. Mac commercials were a particular high point of these attempts to upset the status quo and remind consumers they had a choice other than a Windows-powered PC. But Macs can, of course, run Windows perfectly well. In fact, the MacBook Pro may just be about the best Windows PC on the market ... at least according to Soluto, purveyors of a cloud-based PC management service.
Real people, real conditions
In order to discover what the best-performing Windows PC is, Soluto collected data over the course of three months, which is much longer than most reviews manage. The result is a report which details the 10 most-reliable Windows laptops currently on the market.
The report is based on usage by "real people under real conditions." In total, the machines were booted up 1,346,000 times and spent 62,476 hours on boot. Problems encountered included 224,144 crashes, 250,791 hangs, and 84,251 blue screens of death.
MacBook Pro wins with Windows
The best performing Windows laptop is, according to the report, the mid-2012 MacBook Pro 13-inch from Apple, which, on an average week, suffered 0.01 BSoD, 0.88 crashes, and 1.06 hangs. Although these results are very impressive, two important points have to be taken into account.
Firstly, the MacBook Pro was afforded a clean Windows installation, whereas the competition would have been loaded with crapware by the manufacturers. Secondly, the MacBook Pro 13-inch is the most expensive laptop in the Top 10 with the exception of the MacBook Pro 15-inch Retina that came in at number six. At US$1,199 (without the additional cost of purchasing Windows), it's almost three times more expensive than the Acer Aspire that placed second.
Acer, Dell, Lenovo complete quartet
Acer had two laptops place in the top 10, while Dell managed an impressive five laptops. Lenovo sneaked in at the end with the Thinkpad X1 Carbon, meaning just four manufacturers make up the entire list.
While reliability isn't everything when it comes to laptops, it's a quality that will affect users on a day to day basis, so it shouldn't be ignored. Whether that's enough to prompt people to buy a MacBook Pro is unclear, especially with the premium prices Apple assigns to its hardware and the lack of a keyboard that isn't optimized for Windows, but the effects of having crapware installed on a computer are plain to see.
Source: Soluto
I'm using an old Toshiba J40 [2004] which in two years (I inherited it) has not experienced any of these issues. Clean install of windows and keeping it updated works wonders.
the "huge" difference in price is about $800, which, over the 3-year life of the laptop, is less than $300 a year. how much support do you get for $300, when you're averaging 1 bsod, 40 crashes, and 50 hangs per year?
the real comparison should be in terms of support cost, translated into dollars. because, compared to mac os, windows is the most expensive mistake a computer buyer can make.
The only 'Appearance' settings worth keeping are 'Drop Shadows for Icon Labels' to keep your desktop icons legends tidy and 'Show Thumbnails Instead of Icons' so you can see your images in Explorer.
Some of those flashy graphics DLLs are extremely flaky, not to mention using unnecessarily large amounts of CPU cycles and main and video RAM that they don't always release reliably.
Then trawl through Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Services and disable a number of unnecessary services, look on the Internet for advice as to which are likely not to be needed.
Watch out for software installs that seem to want to put everything including the kitchen sink into Startup too.
A slim, well-maintaned Windows installation should never BSoD or hang at all, basically. I have a number of systems that have run for years with no triuble at all - but I have put the hours in to keep them clean, lean and mean!
It is too new to be included in a review like this. Too bad.
Both under Vista and Windows 7 the only time it becomes unstable is after a dozen windows updates and me refusing to restart out of spite for being required to do so. Usually restart it every 40-60 days.
This machine has 7 external USB hdds hanging off it doing various things from running an sFTP server to remote clients and continuously streaming media via wireless to other devices in my house. Don't know what quoted MTBF for internal HDDs is, but I've never had any indication of failure on internal and USB drives, and they churn 24 hrs a day.
The only maintenance required was replacing the laptop fan after it began to sound like it was about to go (3rd year). Dusty house doesn't help.
What I'm getting at is that a correct initial OS and software setup with stable applications that don't clash with hardware should cause no problem for anyone regardless of the price you've paid. Poor drivers, bloatware and incorrect corporate/vendor scripts are the main source of grief for most people.
Re: Michael Wilson We use Lenovo Thinkpads at work (W500, T420s). Now a W530s with the sole purpose of running Office 2010, corporate portal apps and some Engineering stuff via RDC. Without exception, they've all had unexpected deaths, and if it had not been for my frequent backups I would have lost everything numerous times. These machines cost twice as much as as my home one, and sit idle most times.
What all this has to do with the MAC? As far as I'm concerned its irrelevant what laptop you choose in our day and age. Just make sure you do a fresh install and choose the most stable drivers. Disable Windows auto update, and read up on compatibility between different applications, especially when both running they fight for the same hardware resources.
PS - Mac pro may be 100% stable as long as you play no games. It is exactly 100% Unstable after 10-20 minutes of playing any games that tax its Nvidia 650, as has been proven in other reviews. It is not a gamer laptop, which is a shame given the resolution of the Retina display.
And as others mentioned, the Mac was custom loaded, the PCs were not. Kinda a crappy test case comparison.