How Long Ought a Brand New Laptop or Notebook Last?

by Graham Kelly
http://www.trilogicuk.co.uk

The majority of people would expect an electric powered appliance to last around 5 to 10 years no matter whether its a washing machine, TV or laptop. However, laptops rarely carry on and operate for more than 5 years.

There's two reasons why a laptop may fail; the owner may have a mishap using it or perhaps the electronics may cease to work correctly. Clearly, an individual can have a mishap at any time and does not reflect on the reliability of the laptop so will not be considered in this article.

Astonishingly, failure figures given by Squaretrade in 2009 indicate there was roughly a 15% to 25% failure rate of laptops up to 3 years old and a 10 % to 15% failure rate up to 2 years old. These results leave out failures attributable to accidental damage so can be fully associated with manufacturer’s issues. So put another way, around 1 in 4 laptops failed inside 3 years through no fault of the owner! Some manufactures produced slightly more or less reliable laptops than others; even so, generally speaking laptops end up with a increased failure rate than many other electrical devices like washers or TVs.

Regardless of whether used exactly as the manufacturer instructs a laptop might still go wrong for the following reasons:-

1. When the manufacturer makes a design blunder or installs the incorrect component on the laptop motherboard then the laptop or notebook may perhaps work correctly for a limited time. Then, depending on the wrong component installed, the laptop may fail partially or completely. This occurs because the voltage could be wrong, the component might be reversed, it may be getting too hot etc.

2. An electronic component or components may possibly fail sooner than predicted. Every component which is used to make a laptop carries a mean failure time. In other words, every time a component is made the manufacture will determine that say 99.9% of them will perform for 100,000 hours before failure; the .01% of the remainder may fail after 1,000 hours or less. If the 1,000 hours failure component has been used to produce the laptop then it may cause total failure of the laptop if this is a critical component for ordinary operation. A normal laptop has thousands or tens of thousands of electronic components used in its design. So it's very likely that one or maybe more of these components may fail earlier than the manufacturer expects. This could have no effect on the operation of the laptop, as there are many non-critical components that may completely fail without the owner being conscious of any alteration in the laptop's function. On the other hand, if the failed or failing component manages an important function of the laptop it may totally fail.

3. There could be a mechanical flaw with a switch, DVD drive or hard disk drive. For example, if tiny bit of metal or grit was left within the hard drive during manufacture, then this might eventually scratch the disk or ruin the hard drive mechanics. This can take place at any time and without warning rendering the laptop useless.

A laptop is an extremely sophisticated piece of electronics, incorporating a large number of very small components, each is extremely reliable but each one has the possibility to stop working and completely disable the laptop. So perhaps it’s no surprise that one in four laptops go wrong in just 3 years.

Graham Kelly is an expert at mending defective and damaged laptops and USB RAM drives. He has spent more than 30 years within the electronics field concentrating on electronic design and repair. He has posted numerous articles associated with laptop and notebook faults to assist users diagnose and perhaps perform straightforward laptop repairs by themselves where appropriate. He is always happy to give technical guidance and may be contacted at Trilogic's internet site for laptop motherboard repair or memory stick repair.

Article submitted Saturday, October 08, 2011 & read 18 times.

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