Don't you work at Dell? I thought you did, and if so, maybe you should disclose that first. People tend to have a sort of corporate loyalty, especially with their employer. Sorry if I'm wrong, though.

Personally, I'd go with HP over Dell. I bought an HP laptop, and it is like new one year later. My gf'* Dell is falling apart and it'* the same age and gets less use. Of course, this is all from my own experiences, and experiences vary from person to person. HP customer service isn't going to be miles better than Dell. In fact, it could be exactly the same. I've never actually had a hardware problem w/ my HP though

Yes Hans works for Dell, and Will works for HP... should've been more disclosure on that..

No ****? That'* where I just built mine from..

I've had both a Dell 8200 2.26ghz P4 (2002) , and a Latitude D600 1.3 Centrino (2003). Desktop was great! It'* not fast anymore, and the Dell PSU pinout is limiting for upgrades, but it hasn't fallen apart yet.

The laptop has essentially been rebuilt through and through. The case/hinge was replaced, the Mobo, I had one stick of ram die on me... Thankfully it was covered under the warranty, and my college campus has an authorized dell repair center integrated into the IT dept. I'm not really rough on equipment either, but it was lugged to campus 5 days a week, and used occasionally around the apartment. Recently a plastic part in a USB port came out, and one hinge is separated again..

My parents have an Inspiron (circa 2004?)that'* just like my Latitude, but widescreen. They've had issues with the Mobo, their hard drive just went kaput and had to be replaced locally, and they've had a broken USB port a lil longer than I have.

Laptops, I always have liked IBM/Lenovo, they're BUILT, and don't have as much foo-foo software on them from the factory. This doesn't matter if it'* really going to be on a desk, or in your lap watching TV.

And I work for Intel. Funny how this stuff comes out. I knew Bill was an HP man, but didn't know Hans was a Dell man.

Ive been reasonably happy with my ZTSystems notebook, I bought it off Newegg. I noticed that even just a couple months later they dont even sell the one I have. They sell a similarly speced one with a 2.0ghz CPU instead of the 1.6 one mine has. I think its out of stock at the moment though.


I personally DO have the specs to run Vista and I have not been happy with it at all. The first week I had to download a fix just so I could install additional devices of any kind. I get the occasional BSOD for no apparent reason. Every couple weeks my speakers quit functioning, even with the drivers installed, I have to do a system restore to get them too work again. Ive had to run system restore more times on this machine in 2 months than in 3 years with an XP machine. Personally I dont see what all the fuss is about with Vista. It uses close to a GB of RAM right out of the box, and I see nothing different about it from XP that I am simply left in awe over. I might not be using it too its full extent I guess. But its to the point where Im probably going to call and see if its possible to get a restore disk for this machine with XP instead of Vista. Ive also had a few software compatibility issues.

As for the machine itself, I cant complain much at all, it was very fast right out of the box, and came with not 1 single trial program, not 1....I think thats impressive. It has a pretty long load time now because of programs ive installed, but initially it was pretty darn fast. You really cant beat a laptop with a 8600m GT video card either if youre a budget gamer.

I don't have any corporate affiliations.

I have an old Dell Dimension desktop that is about 12 years old, built for Windows 95 and I upgraded it to Windows 98 SE. It still runs great and I use it to download pictures from my camera. I recently bought a much newer computer, another Dell, and I expect to have it several years as well.

What I mean is any new, brand name, computer will have probably Norton or McAfee on it (decent AV programs, but bloaty) and probably other trial or unneccessary trial software on them you'll want to uninstall and/or replace with your favorie software.

I see a lot of new systems. People buy them and want new RAM or new drives right away, and they all start fairly quickly as is. The first few boots of any system will be a bit slow as all the software wants to go online and look for updates. With XP, it'* the first 5 or 6 boots. But, unless you have the patience to mail order, you'll have a hard time buying an XP machine.

Once you get the new system home, and want to keep boot times down, turn off IM programs, don't install all those damned search bars, and limit yourself to one anti-spyware program. We et systems all the time where people complain about how slow they boot, and they are running al of the above, if not several of each...

PCdecrapifier is a decent program to use to get rid of the "bloatware" it willl come with. Although Norton and MacAfee will have to be manually removed.

It'* usually the first thing I do Right after installing FF

ANother "advantage" to consider with branded systems is that, um, availabilty of OEM OS upgrades, if ya know what I mean....

Your biggest consideration, in my opinion, is not who made the system, but do you want a notebook or desktop?

Well I actaully figured it out...I want a PC, but eventually I will be buying a laptop as well for other things..

I'm going to check out some Hp'* this week and some Dells...let ya know how it goes!