If a new study is to be believed, the "best performing Windows laptop" isn't a Windows laptop at all. It's an Apple MacBook Pro.
The 13-inch Apple laptop claimed the top spot in the study of laptops running Microsoft's Windows operating system, conducted by PC management service Soluto. Apple's 15-inch MacBook Pro also broke into the top 10, ringing in at number 6. Other PC manufacturers in the top 10 are Acer, Dell and Lenovo.
Soluto's study relies on data collected between January and April 2013 from more than 37,000 laptops using services on Soluto's network. Ranking the devices to determine the "best" Windows performer, the company weighed the results of 1.34 million startups, 224,144 crashes, 250,791 "hangs" (when a computer becomes unresponsive) and 82,251 Blue Screens of Death.
In an email to The Huffington Post, Soluto clarified that 90 percent of the machines in the study were running Windows 7, while just 10 percent were on Windows 8. "This is not intentional," explained the company's Chief Product Officer, Roee Adler, "it is the real spread of [operating systems]" among the devices in the study sample.
To be fair, the MacBooks in the study were the only devices running a "clean" install of Windows. That is, the MacBook Pros contained no "crapware" that manufacturers typically install on top of the operating system. Such software can have a huge impact on performance, notes ZDNet, which recently labeled such third-party software a "performance-sapping nightmare."
Soluto acknowledges this and argues that the disadvantage of crapware is the doing of the PC makers, who ultimately decide to install it in the first place. "We simply compared the real PCs in the field," the company explains in a blog post detailing the study. "We believe it’s more representative of reality."
The company plans to repeat the study in a future report, notes Mashable. But the next comparison will include only laptops running a clean install of Windows.
Per AppleInsider, the strength of the MacBook in this study should come with a couple caveats for the average consumer. First, new Macs come with Apple's OS X software pre-installed; installing Windows software requires more initial setup time and troubleshooting. Second, Windows PCs from Acer, Dell and Lenovo tend to be more affordable than Apple laptops.
See the full results of the study, below. Then share your thoughts in the comments, or tweet us @HuffPostTech.
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