Dell really used to be my go-to. I do graphic design and use lightroom for photography in my spare time, so I am picky about machines.

My old Inspiron notebook is still going strong somewhere in Europe with my ex boyfriend. It's 7 years old now. Unfortunately, all attempts to upgrade the RAM failed and it was just futile. The programs I needed to use would not work on 512 mb of ram. Other than that, it was a GREAT PC.

When I buy again, I will get a cheap refurb and get something from either Acer or Asus probably. HP has enough issues. Sony's Vaio line is very expensive, but generally high quality. Macs are good quality machines but they don't run the programs I need like oh... STATA and Windows.

I would go to Linux if all my computer programs were compatible. I'm a computer nerd, so that sort of thing doesn't bother me- neither does tinkering.