Lets put it this way, every modern PC (post the original IBM PC introduction) ever made used a switching regulator power supply to provide the several regulated DC voltages they require, that should give you an idea of how reliable they are. Think of a switching regulator as a 'black box' that has as it's input either a AC or unregulated DC voltage that can vary over a given voltage range. If the input is AC voltage it first converts it to a unregulated DC voltage. Next it converts this DC to a chopped (switched on and off at a very high switch frequency) waveform that can be controlled using feedback after inductive and capacitance filtering to a very precise regulated DC voltage. It does this conversion at much higher efficiency then old style linear voltage regulators. Linear regulator will slowly fade from use as switching regulators continue to get cheaper and smaller. It's almost a sin to use a linear regulator in any battery powered device that requires a regulated DC voltage source.
Lefty