2

I need to know a list of how many percentage of all components break within a year.

For example I would need to know how many percent of all netbook RAM is calculated to break within a year?

This is a lot to ask, I know. But I really do need to know some facts on what to except to break when you have a lot of netbooks. Would be glad if someone had hard facts that could be backed up with resources.

Only netbooks are considered.

8
  • rma? did you meant return merchandise authorization or maybe just ram?
    – Catherine
    Jun 7, 2010 at 17:18
  • @Whitequark I meant RMA (or simply computer repair) Jun 7, 2010 at 17:26
  • 2
    This would be very difficult to answer. There are too many key components (and key component manufacturers) to get a handle on this. You would be better off asking the individual companies who make the end product themselves (if they would even be remotely interested in releasing that information). Jun 7, 2010 at 17:32
  • @Michael: I have a feeling that if you asked the company they would say 50 years or something xD
    – Wuffers
    Jun 7, 2010 at 18:01
  • @Michael Yeah, I asked the company but ofcourse they do not wan't to release this information and risk making themselves look bad. What I am looking for is more of a guideline in how many percentage. It is so hard to get an idea if you do not keep count etc Jun 7, 2010 at 19:39

1 Answer 1

3

Netbooks are identical to laptops in this sense: their manufacturers consider failure information to be proprietary, and won't release it. So actual, industry-wide, figures are effectively unobtainable.

In a general sense, however, you're more likely to have a hard drive or a fan fail than to have a solid-state component like RAM fail. Netbooks, like laptops, are subject to a wide variety of vibration damage due to their mobile nature. Screens will be cracked, machines will be dropped.

If you're thinking of deploying netbooks en masse I'd suggest getting the maximum warranty on each one and sending them back whenever they have an error, and making it the manufacturers problem. When the warranty expires, throw the dead ones away. Where I work, we've been doing that with laptops for years, and it's really streamlined the whole process...Maintaining mobile computers is such a huge p.i.t.a, that it's far more economical just to have a few dozen spares lying around, than to have a bunch of guys whose sole job is to try and fix broken ones.

8
  • Netbooks break easier, faster. For example my ThinkPad would break a netbook in half :) ... So yeah.. netbook is a netbook. Something what people do NOT need, but buy. Like tablets and so on. Just an accessory, not a necessary stuff.
    – Apache
    Jun 7, 2010 at 18:36
  • Thank you for your answer. But what is it based on? For example in my experience(which is a lot) RAM breaks rather often, and you state that it doesn't? I spoke to some people working with fixing computers and they all suggested RAM and HDD as the main thing. I guess I will have to take in account a lot of cracked screens etc. Warranty is unfortunately not a possibility here for several reasons. Jun 7, 2010 at 19:41
  • @kurresmack: Based on anecdotal evidence, just like your's ;) Still we have more than 200 laptops in my work environment, and I've never had to replace RAM, so it's pretty deep anecdotal evidence. A good 80% of the problems we have are hdd related, and most of the others are catastrophic damage situations. Dropped, run over, spilled on, etc. Jun 7, 2010 at 20:16
  • @Satanicpuppy Thanks! This is just what I was looking for, people who work with this and can give their input. Personally I would go with more ram breakage, what RAM do you have? From what I've learned and as you said, most of the damage is HDD. I will review the calculated number of user-caused damages (drop etc) which will have their own special repair, thanks for the heads up. Jun 7, 2010 at 20:33
  • @kurresmack: One of the peculiarities of my workplace is that about half of the workers take their gear out into the field, where physical trauma is more common. The other half tend to stay in the building with its extremely high-grade electrical system, so we don't have motherboard/power supply/ram failures very often (those tend to be power surge related). If your area is rich in electrical storms, you might have more of that sort of problem. Jun 7, 2010 at 20:51

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .