Warranty  provider SquareTrade analysed failure rates for over 30,000 new laptop computers covered by SquareTrade Laptop Warranty plans and found that one-third of all laptops will fail within 3 years. Alp tops of nine brands were analysed: Asus, Toshiba, Sony, Apple, Dell, Lenovo, Acer, Gateway
and HP. Among its conclusions, SquareTrade finds that the average total failure rate of laptops to be 31% over 3 years. While netbooks appear to malfunction slightly more than laptops, the lack of data on netbooks over a year old means that the results are far from conclusive. In terms of brands, ASUS & Toshiba stood out as the most reliable manufacturers; while Acer, Gateway & HP had failure rates significantly higher than the average. Read full report.