I did start off over a year ago, as a non-pro but independent individual, investigating the quality of laptops and I did come across the SquareTrade report. I also questioned a number of honest, competent and independent shops which had their own repair facilities. At the time, my conclusions were that the best in quality were Asus, Lenovo and Toshiba. Over time, Lenovo dropped out of my list and was replaced by Sony.
All this makes sense although my recommendations are not based on a scientific evaluation as you rightly point out. Competition out there is fierce, more so today with the advent of iPads.
HP, which used to be very strict on quality, is going down the drain. Ask any financial expert. They probably won't be around any more within the next two or three years. Their profitable areas (printers, for example) will have been sold to some odd buyer and they'll just disappear. Dell is also faced with major problems. Consider IBM who are smart : they sold their pc business to the Chinese (Lenovo) because profits are declining rapidly and they refused to switch to the sale of junk products.
