Satisfied with customer support for your computer? According to an annual tech-support survey conducted by the Consumer Reports National Research Center and released on Monday, customer support successfully answered to only 60 percent of the respondents’ problems.

The report found that approximately 40 percent of laptops and 30 percent of desktops need repair within three of four years after purchase, and in the worst case scenario, need replacement. The product-reliability report unveiled by comparison that only 10 percent of digital cameras need repairs that soon.

Another problem for consumers is that the warranty usually covers as little as one year for free customer support, which means that most of the time your warranty won’t cover the repairs.

The survey involved 10,000 desktop and laptop computers and included consumer responses from September 2006 to January 2008.

Apple scored the best in polls, solving problems over 80 percent of the time: consumer satisfaction in Apple’s case was 83 in the laptop survey and 81 in desktop survey (on a scale from 0 to 100). Consumer Reports noted Apple was the only manufacturer to score that high in both the surveys, leaving behind names such as Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Sony or Toshiba.

Laptop manufacturers scored as follows (behind Apple): Lenovo 66, Dell 60, Toshiba 55, Sony 51, Gateway 54 and Hewlett-Packard 48 (based on 4,506 laptop computers).

Consumers rated desktop manufacturers as follows (behind Apple): Dell 56, Gateway 54, Hewlett-Packard and Compaq 47 (based on 5,593 desktop computers).

Users rated Apple so high thanks to its unlimited support in Apple stores, called Genius Bar, which according to the survey proved efficient in over 90 percent of the cases.

“The only drawback is if you’re living somewhere that there isn’t a store close by or you’re in a big city where the Genius Bar is likely to be really crowded,” said Donna Tapellini, associate editor at Consumer Reports, Macworld reports.