December 19, 2012 - 16:21 AMT
Apple continues to dominate the world of laptops

The world of laptops continues to be dominated by Apple, which had the highest scores in almost all satisfaction measurements in our 2012 reader survey of satisfaction, reliability, and service, PCWorld reports.

With a mere 6 percent of those polled reporting any significant problem with their Apple machine, users also gave top marks to almost all aspects of their MacBooks. Only in design, the number of ports, and performance for the price did readers award Apple-like scores to Windows PC makers.

Outside of Apple, numbers were fairly consistent, with most satisfaction scores bunched in the 7-to-8 range. Asus, Lenovo, and Sony had slightly higher satisfaction numbers on average; Acer, Dell, and HP for Business fell slightly below the curve.

Universally, consumers reported high satisfaction with their laptops’ display quality and said that they were generally satisfied with the port selection on their machines. At the other end, poor speaker quality remained a common complaint, and there were also gripes about lousy laptop touchpads.

Interestingly, surveyed readers generally said their laptops were quite reliable, giving higher reliability scores to the machines than the overall satisfaction ratings they awarded. Again, Apple led on reliability, with Dell for Home and HP for Home scoring slightly lower than average, PCWorld says.