HP at the bottom of the reliability pile.

When we buy a new laptop, we're often looking for something that's powerful and portable. Most of these features we can read on specification sheets, but what we can't see is predicted reliability.

Warranty firm SquareTrade has published its own report on laptop reliability and has found that smaller laptop companies such as Asus, Toshiba and Sony make laptops less likely to succumb to failure. Larger companies

The firm also found that more expensive laptops are less likely to fail than cheap ones – something that should be comforting to those who pull out the big bucks.

Sadly, failure rates rise as years go by. SquareTrade estimates that nearly one in three laptops fail in the first three years of ownership.

Can Windows' underpinnings beat out OS X's BSD heritage?

By this time next week, both the PC and Mac camps will have new operating systems set for the foreseeable future. Apple's Snow Leopard has been here since late August, but it won't really meet its match until October 22 when Windows 7 releases.

While most users won't be confused as to which operating system he or she wishes to run on a Mac or PC, it's interesting to see how each operating system performs on identical hardware.

CNet's Dong Ngo took a late-2008 model 15-inch MacBook Pro and used it to compare Snow Leopard 10.6.1 and Windows 7 64-bit RTM (with native drivers from Boot Camp 3.0). The machine was equipped with a 2.5GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 4GB of RAM, and a 512MB Nvidia GeForce 9600M GT video card – things that you could also find in a PC notebook.

Ngo found that Snow Leopard outperformed Windows 7 in nearly all areas except for graphics (likely due to better drivers from Nvidia). Some results are:

- Snow Leopard booted and shut down around six seconds faster than Windows 7.

- Snow Leopard took 149.9 seconds to convert 17 songs from the MP3 format to the AAC format. Windows needed 12 seconds more for the same job.

- Snow Leopard took 444.3 seconds vs. Windows 7's 723 seconds to convert a movie file from the MP4 format into the iPod format while having iTunes converting songs in the background the job (versions of QuickTime were different, however).

- In a battery test, Windows 7 lasted 78 minutes, while Snow Leopard managed to stay on for 111 minutes.

- Windows 7's Cinebench R10 score was 5,777 vs. 5,437 for the OS X.

- Windows 7 in Call of Duty 4 scored 26.3 frames per second while Snow Leopard got only 21.2 fps.

Although this may be as fair a test we have yet with identical hardware, drivers clearly play a noticeable role here. Snow Leopard also has to contend with fewer system configurations than Windows 7 does, so Apple has the advantage in optimizations. Apple is also behind the Boot Camp 3.0 drivers, which can also be a source for conspiracy theories.

In the end, most MacBook Pro owners will have bought their machines to run OS X, not Windows 7, but it's still an interesting test nonetheless. Now if only Apple would allow official installs of OS X to PCs – then we'd be able to test from the other side.

I found this article interesting because it is true.  Laptops by design are not as stable of a machine as a desktop.  Consider the processors are normally half the power of desktops, they are mobile devices that constantly get moved and jostled around, and normally have cheaper parts (like the paper thin keyboard). Laptop parts are also twice as expensive to replace as desktop parts on average as well.  Check out the full article from Tom's Hardware:

That's right, you NEED a new laptop.

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We all love shiny new computers, which is never more true than when it comes to laptops. Unlike with desktop machines, a laptop is a complete package that typically evolves as a whole.

With a laptop, you're not going to upgrade the display or keyboard, and you can forget about upgrading the internals. All those reasons aside, there's now research that suggests that keeping a laptop beyond three years is usually more trouble than its worth.

Companies still working with tightened belts may be pressured to stave off the replacement cycle, but that could end up costing more, according to tech analyst Jack Gold.

Computerworld reports that Gold has come up with a cost model that estimates the cost of maintaining a laptop for two years beyond the initial three is $960 – which may end up costing more than just purchasing a new one at the end of year three.

As the laptop ages, it is more prone to failures of worn items such as the hard drive, keyboard and battery. The relatively slower old machine may also not be as productive as a newer model, also costing the company some money.

So there you have it – yet another reason to have shiny new things more often!