I'm a Sony guy, and a decent one can be had for $550. Tech guys will bemoan their use of proprietary parts, but I never upgrade my computers, as I'm going to want a new one with better features in 3 years anyway. My Vaios have been really reliable and durable. On the one near my couch, I've spilled water on it, knocked it off the stand, and one of my parrots likes to land on top of the screen and poop onto the keyboard, but I've had zero issues. In my experience with low-price Dells, they've generally been pretty crappy. My wife and I each bought one maybe 6 years ago, and both were sent in multiple times for repairs before being scrapped in under 4 years due to hardware failures. We have slightly higher-end Dell laptops at work and seem to be having work done on them constantly. I avoid Macs, but it's pretty much because I don't feel the luxury brand price is justified.