We’ve heard the stories — the four-year-old laptop hanging on by a screw; the hard drive that failed once a week; the battery that lasts only six seconds before releasing the ear-shattering beep of death; the senior who poured beer on his computer to get a new one two weeks before graduation.
There are a lot of complaints about the Carolina Computing Initiative. So we asked the question: Are CCI computers really that bad?
The short answer is no. By nature, laptops get a lot of use and a lot of wear, particularly from college students. And in the constantly evolving technology world, four years is a long time. Repair data suggest that failure rates increase significantly after the first year or two of a computer’s use.
But the University community still needs computers, and needs them to work. We examined the most frequently quoted problems with CCI computers to find the fact and the fiction.
Hard drives fail often
There’s no evidence that Lenovos experience hard drive failure more than other laptops. They may even experience it less.
“Any laptop is going to see a lot of hard drive failures. Lenovo itself is one of the industry leaders as far as reliability and quality and our numbers here at the University track with that,” said Matt Howell, Manager of Walk-in Services at Information Technology Services.
Because hard disks have sensitive moving parts, the motion laptops endure on a daily basis increases the risk they’ll fail at some point in their service life.
Batteries die quickly
