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PC Pro Awards 2002

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By James Morris, editor

Posted on 13 Sep 2002 at 13:55

PC Pro's annual awards have grown over the past six years and are now the ultimate buying guide to the PC industry. Presented at a lush ceremony at London's Dorchester Hotel on Thursday 12 September 2002, this year's PC Pro Awards represent the opinions and experiences of more than 7,200 readers alongside the magazine's staff and contributing editors.

To gauge reliability and service across the industry, we asked readers of PC Pro and visitors to the web site to report back on the PCs, notebooks, monitors, printers and PDAs they used at work and home and to rate their broadband and dial-up ISPs. For the editorial awards PC Pro's extensive editorial team picked companies or products that had excelled over the last 12 months in each of six categories.

However, the core emphasis on service and reliability of previous years remains and it's an issue that's doubly important in what has been one of the worst financial years ever for the industry. It's also one of the toughest areas for us to test objectively when reviewing computing products. If something is going badly wrong for a manufacturer, your letters of complaint will quickly alert us to the situation, but this can't justifiably be called a scientific way of assessing customer service or product reliability and will never establish when a company shows excellence.

Yet service and support remain among the most important considerations when buying a new piece of kit, and they need to be assessed. Without question, the PC Pro Awards incorporate the most comprehensive survey on the area of service and support of its kind in the UK.

From the results (see below), we've chosen 12 winners. There are awards for service and reliability for the best manufacturers of desktop and notebook computers. You also picked out the top makers of inkjet and laser printers, LCD and CRT monitors, and handheld computers. Finally, your favourite online retailer, broadband ISP and dial-up ISP were determined.

The editorial awards highlight six key areas in computing. We've chosen the manufacturer that we believe has shown the most innovation over the last 12 months. We've also pinpointed the hardware and software products most desired by the editorial team. Over the last year, one manufacturer has shown consistent quality, earning recognition from our Labs team, and we've also highlighted the two products that have most influenced business computing, in our Real World and Enterprise Awards.

A full report on all the finalists plus lots of information about who's doing better or worse than previous years can be found in the November 2002 issue of PC Pro on sale 26 September 2002.

James Morris, editor

Reliability and Service Awards

PC Reliability Award
Winner: Dell Computers

PC Service Award
Winner: Evesham Technology

Notebook Reliability Award
Winner: IBM

Notebook Service Award
Winner: IBM

Inkjet Printer Award
Winner: Canon

Laser Printer Award
Winner: Samsung
Honourable Mention: Hewlett-Packard

CRT Monitor Award
Winner: Iiyama
Honourable Mention: LG
Honourable Mention: Sony

LCD Monitor Award
Winner: LG

PDA Award
Winner: Palm

Dial-up ISP
Winner: Virgin.net