The government would spend 250k a toilet seat if it could justify it with the reliability of the toilet never clogging.sundance95 wrote:So you are contending that Asus, which is one of if not the leading netbook manufacturer, doesn't make 'crappy low end models'? If anything, as a percentage of total computers sold, Asus probably sells 'crappy low end models' at a much higher rate then Lenovo, which would make Asus' better failure rate even more impressive.beach_terror wrote:But you also admitted that the Lenovo failure rates are skewed because they include their crappy low end models. That means your "hard data" is flawed in that respect. Therefore, just because Asus is above Lenovo, doesn't mean its true. It could be, but the data is flawed enough to put a higher premium on the "guess work" (ie massive contracting of Thinkpad's for corps and govt work) that you're so determined to avoid.
I lol at the assumption that ThinkPad must be the most reliable just because gov and corporate purchasers buy them. Do you think there may be other factors that influence those customers, such as enterprise sales and service for these massive computer fleets? Asus doesn't offer enterprise level sales and service, does that mean that they have a higher failure rate? Can you think of customers that continue purchasing practices out of pure inertia more than government and corporate buyers?
The reasoning behind governments getting into Thinkpad contracts are that they are proven are mission-critical circumstances and meet certain specs for certain jobs(mil-spec).
To be fair, I have seen a few places adopting Panasonic's Toughbook line in the field, electric and cable companies come to mind... so does urban planning and *SOME* civil engineers.