A recent study on laptop failure rates from SquareTrade, a PC warranty services provider, had some unsettling results: one in three laptops is likely to catastrophically fail within three years. But not all laptops are created equal, and some are more reliable than others. Here are the results among top manufacturers, from worst to best:

9. HP: They may be the laptop market share leader, but nearly 26% of their units failed within the three year study.

8. Gateway: The Acer subsidiary didn’t fare much better, with a failure rate of 23.5%

7. Acer: At #3 in overall sales, Gateway’s parent company was only marginally more reliable at 23.3%

6. Lenovo: A 21% failure rate from the Chinese-owned giant isn’t what you’d call inspiring.

5. Dell: Make fun of their ads and criticize their business practices all you want, but the oft maligned 2^nd place manufacturer was found to be more reliable than their top competitors, coming in at 18.3%.

4. Apple: They’re hip, attractive, innovative, and popular, but Mac Books aren’t immortal. Their 17.4% failure rate puts them in the middle of the pack.

3. Sony: Sony Vaio laptops aren’t cheap, but you get what you pay for with only a 16.8% incidence of crashing.

2. Toshiba: In recent years, they’ve lowered price without sacrificing quality: only a 15.7% chance of becoming a doorstop.

1. Asus: While not quite as much of a household name as many of the PC makers on this list, the quietly dominant Taiwanese company produces components for HP and Apple, and their own units experienced the lowest failure rate of all, edging out Toshiba with a healthy 15.6%.

Source: http://www.squaretrade.com, 2009