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Boy, do we have a nice slab of data for you to sink your teeth into today. The 3-year service history of more than 30,000 laptops has been pored over, analyzed, and reduced to gorgeous comparative charts, which you know you're dying to know more about. We should note, however, that the service was provided by SquareTrade, whose primary business is selling extended warranties, but that shouldn't completely prejudice us against reaching conclusions on the basis of the presented facts. Firstly, netbooks have shown themselves to be on average 20 percent less reliable than entry-level laptops, which in turn are 10 percent more likely to break down than premium machines. In other words, you get what you pay for -- shocking, right? The big talking point, though, will inevitably be the manufacturer comparison chart above: here ASUS and Toshiba (rather appropriately) share the winners' spoils, while HP languishes in the ignominious last place, with more than a quarter of all laptops expected to suffer a hardware fault of some kind within three years.

Not really surprising. I've always liked Asus products and the fact that they provide a 2 year manufacturers warranty with every laptops means they believe in their products.

Toshiba has always been my second favourite choice even though they've didn't offer cutting edge technology (e.g. 15" laptop with num keys, eSata ports, Blu-ray drives etc) on their laptops till months after Asus and Sony did, they've always made sure their laptops have a pretty solid build.

Thanks

So it's no surprise to hear Jonney Shih, ASUS chairman, listing Toshiba's PC business amongst its possible targets for acquisition according to the Commercial Times.

"Back at CES in January, I was roaming around the Asus booth and one of the PR schleps pulled me into a room in the back to show me the Eee keyboard. My first thoughts were yeah its cool, but what’s the point of the thing really. Asus has finally confirmed when the Eee Keyboard will ship and it now has one bit of tech crammed inside that may just make it useful after all." ... details at link

Asus is planning to release an dual screen e-book reader with a low price of £100(that's about 120 Euros). With this price tag, the Asus e-book reader would be one of the cheapest such devices and could be a real competitor for the Kindle.