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Customer (I can't get no) Satisfaction

Toronto Star Fast Forward column for July 27(?), 2000

Copyright ©, Myles White, 2000

Summer is the traditional time for lying in the sun, frolicking with friends and family, and for the major US-based glossy computer magazines to begin their annual reports of product service and reliability. 

I dutifully pass these along because, while price, performance, and market share are one set of criteria people use to make their purchasing decisions, it's also a good idea to try to find out whether a particular brand, model, or revision of a hardware or software product has a tendency to break. And if it does, you don't want to be plunged into On-Hold Hell trying to get it fixed. 

The first of this year's crop of reports, from the Ziff-Davis publication, PC Magazine is contained in its July 2000 edition. In its 13th annual survey, the magazine used returns from 8,500 randomly selected subscribers (out of 17,000 ballots mailed out) between January and April of this year. Results for each brand mentioned had to come from at least 50 respondents. Questions covered whether the system (or software) arrived broken, broke later, or didn't break at all. If there was a problem, the queries dealt with how the tech support and repair experience went. The key question (at least to me) was whether the respondents would buy that brand again and/or recommend it to others. 

Note that although there was no indication that Canadian subscribers were or were not contacted, some of the brand names may not be widely available in Canada (and that Toshiba Canada, for example, doesn't sell desktop systems; it's strictly notebooks only north of the border). 

Also, some Canadian companies, notably hardware manufacturers at the bottom of the lists, have insisted in the past that these are largely American results and are not valid in Canada (funny, but none of the ones at the top of the lists say the same thing).

Hardware 

Desktop Systems 

The only manufacturer of desktop computers to receive the PC Mag Reader's Choice Award for an "A" rating (above average for overall use) was Dell. 

A "B" rating (combination of above-average and average scores) was garnered by (in alphabetical order for overall use), Gateway, Hewlett Packard, IBM, Micron, Quantex, and "locally built" systems. 

For office use, the "B" team was comprised of Dell, Gateway, Hewlett Packard, IBM, Micron, and locally built systems. 

The "B" home use group included Gateway, Hewlett Packard, IBM, Micron, Quantex, and locally built. 

"C" (average or combination of above average, average, or below average scores) in the overall category went to Apple, emachines, NEC, and Sony. 

Office use "Cs" included Acer, Apple, and Compaq. 

And for home use, the C-team was comprised of Apple, emachines, NEC, Sony, and Toshiba. 

A "D" rating (average and below average scores) for overall use included Acer, AST, Compaq, CompUSA, and Packard Bell. 

No company received a "D" rating for office use, but those grounded for the weekend in the home use category were Acer, AST, Compaq, and Packard-Bell. 

"E" was given for below-average scores in all measures. The sole recipient of this dubious honour is Toshiba in the overall category (note again, for desktop systems not sold in Canada).

Notebooks

The most telling part of the PC Magazine report on service and reliability is that not one notebook manufacturer received an "A" rating (and likewise there were no "Es" either). Like desktop systems, the notebooks were evaluated in overall, office, and home use categories. 

"B" recipients overall included Dell and IBM. 

For office use the companies listed were Dell, IBM, and Micron. 

For home use, Dell, Gateway, and IBM. 

"C" stars overall were Gateway, Hewlett Packard, Micron, Sony, Toshiba, and WinBook. 

For office use, the Cs included Compaq, Gateway, and Toshiba. 

The home use "C" category had a single member: Toshiba. 

"Ds" (and presumably a detention) went to Compaq, NEC, and locally built notebooks in the overall category. 

There were no "D" marks for office use, but the basement dweller for home use was Compaq.

Printers

We can test printer speed and get a good subjective assessment of colour fidelity and print quality, but PC Mag asked its readers to rate them based on need for repair, satisfaction with reliability, tech support, and repair experience, and whether they'd purchase this brand again. 

The "A, B, C, & D" ratings are the same as those above. 

Across the board "A" recipients include Hewlett Packard and Panasonic (surprise). It may also be worth noting that HP had 6,500 respondents reporting using their products, while the next most reported upon, Epson — which received the only "B" rating due to only average satisfaction with the repair experience — received 1,600 responses. 

"Cs" were garnered by Alps, Apple, Brother, IBM, Lexmark, NEC, Oki Data, and Xerox. 

There were no "E" recipients, but those gathering a "D" included Canon (below average on everything except service) and Tektronix (43 percent of its units needed repair in the past 12 months).

Software

I know of no major software product introduced in the past 10 years that hasn't had some flaw. In fact that should be "flaws." It has become an "industry standard" to release variously titled service packs, updates, or "patches" on a semi-regular basis. The questions asked here included whether the product produced satisfactory results overall, whether customers were satisfied (or not) with tech support, and whether they'd recommend the product to others 

The results in each of the three categories were weighted as "significantly better than average, average, or significantly worse than average." 

To note the highlights: The e-mail applications Eudora and Eudora Pro received the significantly better than average rating across the board, as did Intuit's checkbook management program Quicken. 

Adobe Photoshop (graphics software), Adobe Acrobat and Norton Anti-virus (both of the later in the utilities and anti-virus category) were also given across-the-board "good" ratings. 

Programs receiving above average ratings for overall performance and likelihood to recommend (but not for technical support) included Microsoft NT, WordPerfect Office, Microsoft Outlook and Outlook Express, Macromedia Dreamweaver, HomeSite, JASC PaintShop Pro, Partition Magic, and Symantec's pcAnywhere. 

Bottom-feeders in the software category (worse than average in all categories) included McAfee Office, Microsoft FrontPage, and Lotus Notes.

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