I will admit that my Dell experience is from the corporate world of on-call rotation laptops and is quite an extreme. The problems I had were that, after a year of being an on-call rotation laptop, the dell latitudes had very flimsy screen hinges, the keyboard was down to about 97% (keys not working/sticking,etc at times), and the whole case was generally flimsy. I could grab it in two hands at the middle (either side of the screen when closed) and twist it back and forth about 5 degrees either way...
Now, the situation that this happened in is a laptop that had to travel back and forth to work every day, was rotated around 7 people all whom had no interest in the longevity of the computer, and who would only use it a couple times a week. They aren't good for the hard-travelled.
Overall, the systems were stable and provided the needed computing power...it was just that the long-term resilience of the casing back then (4 years ago) was not up to par with something I'd want to own.
I've had experience with IBM thinkpads, IBM/Lenovo thinkpads, Dell Latitudes, Old gateways, new gateways, Sony Vaios, and Mac Book Pros. Of all of them, the sturdiest were definitely the vaios with the metal casings, and the IBM thinkpads of yore. The Sony Vaios are shiny, but break down from cheap manufacturing errors the day after warrantee expires. I've relegated my Sony (after spending $200 in repair charges to get the memory slots resoldered, and then to have the video card go wonky, which is sad to see happen on a 16" 1600x1200 pristine display) to being a linux router. The mac's have about the same reliability, but they've got apple care protection which can cover most issues for three years, at the expense of paying about what the the repair costs would be up-front.
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Now, the situation that this happened in is a laptop that had to travel back and forth to work every day, was rotated around 7 people all whom had no interest in the longevity of the computer, and who would only use it a couple times a week. They aren't good for the hard-travelled.
Overall, the systems were stable and provided the needed computing power...it was just that the long-term resilience of the casing back then (4 years ago) was not up to par with something I'd want to own.
I've had experience with IBM thinkpads, IBM/Lenovo thinkpads, Dell Latitudes, Old gateways, new gateways, Sony Vaios, and Mac Book Pros. Of all of them, the sturdiest were definitely the vaios with the metal casings, and the IBM thinkpads of yore. The Sony Vaios are shiny, but break down from cheap manufacturing errors the day after warrantee expires. I've relegated my Sony (after spending $200 in repair charges to get the memory slots resoldered, and then to have the video card go wonky, which is sad to see happen on a 16" 1600x1200 pristine display) to being a linux router. The mac's have about the same reliability, but they've got apple care protection which can cover most issues for three years, at the expense of paying about what the the repair costs would be up-front.