BACK UP!

Just as the mantra of real estate agents is “location, location, location,” the chant of information technology specialists is “back up, back up, back up.” And this is especially true if you have a laptop.

A benchmark study from an information technology group, Gartner, Inc., reports both good news and bad news regarding hardware failure rates for computers. The good news is that PC vendors have reduced hardware annual failure rates (AFRs) by approximately 25 percent in the past two years.

The bad news is that notebook AFRs still range from 15 percent to 20 percent throughout the life of the system. Three years ago, notebook AFRs averaged 20 percent in the first year, climbing to 28 percent in the third year. Desktop AFRs have gone from 7 percent in the first year and 15 percent in the fourth year of life to a current level of 5 percent in the first year with an anticipated 12 percent in the fourth year.

Gartner defines a hardware failure as any repair incident that requires a hardware component to be replaced. The component can be as trivial as a notebook latch or as significant as a motherboard. The general pattern is for newly purchased systems to have an early shakeout period with high failure rates that drop back to lower levels after 60 to 90 days.

PC hardware reliability figures are not publicly available, because PC vendors consider the information proprietary and will not disclose it. However, many PC vendors and warranty repair providers have shared the information with Gartner off the record during the past several years. Gartner has cross-checked this input against feedback of Gartner clients, many of whom manage installed bases of 50,000 or more units.

MOST COMMON FAILURES

For desktop systems, motherboards and hard drives are the two largest sources of failures.

For notebooks, screen breakage used to be the single-largest source of failure; however, over time, notebook manufacturers have improved design significantly to reduce screen breakage by adding structural rigidity to the notebook casing and screen bezel, as well as by providing a greater clearance between the screen and the keyboard when the system is closed.

Currently, the top sources of notebook failures on systems less than two years old are: