manufacturer mbtf testing, well, I would not in any way trust a manufacturers numbers compared to the numbers of a rival manufacturer. there are far too many small, subtle things you can do to inflate your MBTF numbers.
Even if they were trying to be honest, testing wear (where wear might be mostly, say, how often the damned thing gets dropped) is really hard. On average, how many times a year does a laptop get dropped? and is that number the same as the times a netbook gets dropped? is there something about it's size/shape (or, unknowably at product launch-time, the demographics of the buyers) that cause netbooks to get dropped more or less?
Even if they were trying to be honest, testing wear (where wear might be mostly, say, how often the damned thing gets dropped) is really hard. On average, how many times a year does a laptop get dropped? and is that number the same as the times a netbook gets dropped? is there something about it's size/shape (or, unknowably at product launch-time, the demographics of the buyers) that cause netbooks to get dropped more or less?