It's hardly scientific, but both my parents have Dell laptops, and they seem happy enough with them. I'm not a big fan of the plastic construction, having been

It's hardly scientific, but both my parents have Dell laptops, and they seem happy enough with them. I'm not a big fan of the plastic construction, having been spoiled by my metal Macbook, but they seem solid enough, and apparently there's always some special offer of one kind or another to take advantage of, so the prices can be very reasonable. And my old employer bought dell desktops. I guess they had some bulk deal or something. They always seemed basically fine, and felt pretty solidly put together - I wouldn't have wanted mine to fall on my foot. Some of the staff had dell laptops, and nobody seemed to have much to say about them one way or the other. Which is probably exactly what you want, really... I can't speak for older Dell stuff, nor for anybody else's experience, but I've seen no evidence that their computers are worth avoiding.