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Consumer Reports has revoked its recommendation of Microsoft Surface laptops and tablets due to poor reliability compared to other brands, as reported by its subscribers:
Consumer Reports is removing its "recommended" designation from four Microsoft laptops and cannot recommend any other Microsoft laptops or tablets because of poor predicted reliability in comparison with most other brands.
To judge reliability, Consumer Reports surveys its subscribers about the products they own and use. New studies conducted by the Consumer Reports National Research Center estimate that 25 percent of Microsoft laptops and tablets will present their owners with problems by the end of the second year of ownership.
Microsoft objects:
"Microsoft's real-world return and support rates for past models differ significantly from Consumer Reports' breakage predictability," Microsoft said in an emailed statement. "We don't believe these findings accurately reflect Surface owners' true experiences or capture the performance and reliability improvements made with every Surface generation."
Also at CNN, CNBC, and Reuters.
Update: Microsoft blog post.
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Friday August 11 2017, @06:57PM (2 children)
CR was legit back in the day. But organizations sell out. Whether or not they did I can't say, haven't read them in years.
(Score: 2) by stretch611 on Friday August 11 2017, @07:47PM
As far as I can tell, they have not sold out their integrity. And lets be realistic, if they sold out they would ignore consumer's feedback and accept money to agree with (in this case) Microsoft's explanation.
My biggest dealing with them is I frequent their consumer related news site, https://consumerist.com/ [consumerist.com]
I have signed up for their bi-weekly news letter, occasionally (not frequent) they do send out requests for donations to keep them going.
Now with 5 covid vaccine shots/boosters altering my DNA :P
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 11 2017, @07:48PM
You have to look at what staff they employ. They have multiple, and I mean multiple, experts in cars, but many of their experts in other places have fled and many that are left are either J-school grads or are measured in years (instead of decades). Plus, they have only so much time to test everything. Plus, the top has gotten bigger and bigger salaries, while making bigger and bigger mistakes, which leads to brain drain.
I think a perfect example is the article here: https://www.consumerreports.org/solar-panels/doing-the-math-on-teslas-solar-roof/ [consumerreports.org] where they reprinted a slightly updated article they originally printed less that 6 months ago. The piece is complete crap. They basically just took Tesla's word for it and barely compared it to a traditional system, not that you could since the real numbers aren't out from Tesla yet.
http://stateofthenet.net/2016/02/22-more-experts-have-fled-horrific-leadership-at-consumer-reports/ [stateofthenet.net]
http://www.alternet.org/media/exposed-behind-brain-drain-consumer-reports [alternet.org]