My first, and current, laptop is a Dell. It's not even one year old, and I've had to get the keyboard, motherboard, battery, and screen replaced. Then I got the battery and charger replaced again. A few months later I had to get ANOTHER battery replacement. Then, after 2 hours on the live chat, I was able to get a refurbished replacement.
Dell is pretty good, some people has problems with them and some don't. I have an HP laptop, works awesome, never had a problem with it in a whole year.
The main problem with Dell for me (after going through 4 of their laptops) is overheating. Other then that I've had no complains whatsoever.
Dell is the worst computer company known to man. Horrible customer support with a horrible track record. Just stay away from them.
What exactly are you trying to get out of this computer? If you're trying to game don't even look at a laptop, it's not worth it, trust me.
As Nemmyy said build your own desktop, and save yourself a ton of money and time arguing with customer support when something breaks and you have to send it in.
You won't regret building your own.
But if you must get a laptop, HP's are nice, with great customer spport. I think you got unlucky.
Personally I don't think that the Dell or HP "Machines" are any different to the ones you can build yourself. They're just a tad more expensive part for part wise. I mean, you can buy all the parts in a Dell or HP machine, chuck them into a case and save possibly ~30%.
No dells aren't that bad, I had a desktop that was dell that never had any problems. i buy an acer laptop two weeks later and I am taking it back getting a new one. next computer i get I am building.
I only had one Dell in my lifetime, it wasn't that bad at all. But at the time, all I was using it for was the internet, so if you're planning on buying one for gaming or server hosting I can't really make a recommendation for you.
A dell computer is just your usual computer parts put together in a different case with there name on it. There is no difference.