The results are in, PC Magazine has tallied the votes, and the Apple Macintosh is clearly sitting atop the computer industry in terms of service and reliability. Dell was also rated an overall A+, with somewhat lesser rankings in some of the areas than Apple. Compaq continues its streak in the low Ds.

The article itself is long and detailed and contains a lot of interesting tidbits, including OS X having the highest probability of never crashing (according to respondents). Also interesting were some of the differences between the individual category results.

In Reader's Choice, Apple tied with Dell in all of the Desktop categories, and IBM in all laptop categories except first year reliability (where Apple sat alone). They even ranked in overall satisfaction with servers (tied with Dell, the only company to be a choice for both overall and first year, which it shared with Compaq).

Another interesting difference was that with desktops, there were wide variations among manufacturers for the number of people who had problems, but it appears that just about 90% of all people who got computers either didn't have problems or solved them themselves. Not surprising, the home-builts had the highest rate of problems, and the highest rates of fixing it themselves.

All in all, a very nice showing for both Dell and Apple. I find it amusing that the company known for commoditizing the PC is atop the PC marketplace. It says something about the folks at Dell. For Apple's part, I don't think that it is any surprise to see them there.