A few weeks ago, a friend of mine told me about his wonky laptop. It was a familiar story. His newish Vista box had, without much warning, begun collapsing into a blue-screen funk on almost a daily basis. He went on to explain that he'd spent countless hours on the phone with Dell support techs, all of whom were kind, polite, and intent on being helpful. The problem, of course, was that none of them had actually helped at all.

We were near my friend's office, so we stopped in so he could show me the laptop. I was startled by how new it was.

"When did you get this?" I asked.

"April," he replied.

It was early June. The PC was not even three months old. The blue screens had begun within a few weeks of owning the one of PCMag's favorites (Cisco Cheng gave it four out of five stars). I asked my friend the usual questions: Had he installed any unusual apps, visited any odd sites, or opened an e-mail attachment that he probably shouldn't have?

His response: "No. It happens when I use the browser."

That seemed somewhat specific. In my experience, it's usually pretty hard to recreate a blue-screen experience. But my friend walked me through a simple series of steps

"I start it up, open the browser, visit this site [one chosen from his favorites in IE7], and then ."

He trailed off as the system lapsed into a blue-screen coma. I was stunned. Rarely had I seen a consumer so expertly recreate a PC malfunction.

Holding a sheaf of papers in his hand, my friend pointed out notes from six different multi-hour support calls. He'd recorded the names of the support techs, as well as the time, date, and duration of each call. Each support tech had tried something different. For example, even though the PC came with security software, one had him install new protection from Trend Micro. In fact, there was a lot of utility installing and uninstalling. None of it worked.

At no time did the techs offer to take the PC back. That's not too surprising since no manufacturer wants to get back every PC with a problem. Typically, system issues arise from user ignorance or a simple setting change that's easily reversed or altered. For my friend, though, this was not the case.

I spent 45 minutes looking through the systems' processes in the Task Manager to see if I could find anything that could be hijacking his system or causing what I assumed was a driver collision leading to the blue screens. I found nothing. 

In the end, the PC was returned to Dell, and my friend got a new laptop that works. This brings me back to my original question: Are some PCs born bad? Are they, like bad cars fresh off the assembly line, lemons? Some of the results from our recent Service and Reliability survey support this notion. Nearly 20,000 PC Magazine readers responded to our questions about their experiences with new laptops and desktops (as well as a host of other product categories). In the case of one manufacturer, HP, 2.3 percent of desktops and 3 percent of laptops needed to be replaced entirely. My friend falls into the 2.8 percent of Dell laptop owners whose equipment needed to be.

I've heard other stories about new PCs that have gone awry, and with so many systems sold each year, this is probably to be expected. Honestly, my own still relatively new PC has certain issues that persist to this day. For example, the wireless mouse and keyboard have a heck of a time communicating with the wireless USB dongle, despite being just 5 feet away from one another. Here's a second example: The multiformat media card reader regularly acts as if it doesn't exist. I plug in an SD or compact flash card and nothing happens. If I had more time, I guess I'd contact HP tech support, but I usually forget about these issues until I'm once again sitting down in front of the PC (which, at home, is not nearly as often as it is for my wife). Then I grumble and remind myself that I have to contact HP. Still, why doesn't the damn thing work?

But I digress.

If we accept the fact that some of the PCs that come off the assembly line are duds, should Acer, Dell, HP, Lenovo, and other PC manufacturers' support techs also be able to recognize this? If so, then they'd know by the second 2-hour call that this is a problem that can't be solved and they should simply take back the PC. A new system can go to the frustrated customer and then Dell, for example, could take the lemon, tear it apart, and see exactly where those malfunctioning parts reside. In the end, the PC manufacturer gains some valuable information for future system builds, and they satisfy someone who is now more likely to remain a customer and buy another Dell system in the future.

I doubt this will happen. Most PC makers seem to believe it's more cost-effective to have some guy in India try gamely to coax you into believing the problem is with you and not your PC. The problem won't be solved, but the PC company may be willing to replace a part or two to see if that helps. Eventually, the system will be too old to return and the consumer will either figure out workarounds or give up in disgust.