Vendor rankings on these pages—across categories included in this year's survey—are based on overall satisfaction with a product and/or manufacturer rated by respondents. Product/manufacturer overall satisfaction is derived from response to survey questions dealing with: ease of installation and setup, quality of documentation and factory calibration, product availability and performance, price and value for the dollar, product upgrades and legacy system support, vendor Web site resources usefulness, and understanding of customer needs. Also considered in this section's rating is likeliness to purchase from that vendor again, and willingness to support continued purchases from that vendor in opposition to corporate wishes to purchase from a different manufacturer.

To adjust for vendors with lower response levels and high ratings from outranking vendors with similarly high ratings but even higher response levels, total responses for each vendor were multiplied by the vendor's weighted score. The result enables us to rank the top vendors—in terms of customer satisfaction—for each category.

Only those companies with weighted averages higher than or equal to the category's weighted average are included in these listings.

The numbers in parentheses following the category names are the weighted average score for the category as a whole. Vendors' weighted scores appear directly after their name. The bracketed number—used to determine ranking order—is the result of the calculation multiplying the total responses for a particular vendor by the vendor's weighted score.