Apple and Panasonic are top performers in Rescuecom's third annual Computer Reliability Report, the company that has been assisting both businesses and home users with on-site and remote technical support since 1997 says.

Announcing the results of its reliability report, Rescuecom revealed that Apple scored the highest with 700 points, with Panasonic following in on its footsteps with a score of 489. In a descending manner, Lenovo, Toshiba, and HP were listed with scores cumulating 393, 299, and 184 points, respectively. Reliability Scores were based on a comparison of Rescuecom's call center data with IDC's third quarter U.S, on a sample of more than 36,000 service calls to Rescuecom.

The report calculates the "Reliability Score" for each computer vendor, based on the calculated difference between overall U.S. market share, from January 2008 to October 2008, and the percentage of calls requesting service received by Rescuecom's call center. Higher scores indicate that fewer calls for service were received for the specific computer vendor, as opposed to the expected levels based upon market share estimates.

"Computers are an important investment and in today's economy, more than ever, it's important for consumers to know the reliability of the product they are purchasing," David A. Milman, founder and CEO of Rescuecom, said. "We created the Rescuecom reliability survey to inform computer users about what they can expect before – and after – they purchase a new computer."

"Rescuecom has no allegiance to any hardware manufacturer (we call this being manufacturer agnostic), so we can provide an objective and unbiased rating of computer hardware reliability based on real-world experience."

Rescuecom also noted that this was the second time Apple ran away with the number-one spot in the reliability survey, beating its closest competitor (Panasonic) by more than 200 points. Toshiba, which wasn't even a performer last year, took the number-four spot, defeating the next closest vendor by more than 100 points. HP, also not a performer last year, took DELL's fifth place.