I've had far better experiences with Dell than HP or IBM (Lenovo now). As far as getting the cheapest parts supply, well all of them do that. But I understand. Especially since all of the computers I build use very high quality power supplies. What I like beyond what might be called my own good luck with their systems over the years (and this makes it easy on IT types) is that you can give Dell a jingle and a new part will be sitting on your desk at 10 the next day with a paid return shipping sticker for the bad part. Of all the Dell machines I've administered the only problems that have occured on an even remotely ongoing basis is hard drive failures. Now, since Dell buys and sell ba-Jillions of hard drives from various manufacturers, and being that HDD's by their nature are one the most likely components to fail (anything with moving parts) this is not suprising. Intel was an IBM shop at the time (don't know now, our group started buying Dell's outside of the normal channels) and I can't tell you how many HDD's I replaced there. Of course IBM machines used IBM drives. Can't say I'm a huge fan of their laptops though. A little fragile (not nearly as bad as a Vaio, don't even get me started on those pansy-ass pieces of cow dung) The ThinkPad's I've run across have been ugly as hell but nearly bulletproof. As far as souping the system up, buy a Dell barebones and add your own RAM. Just don't tell tech support if you have to call them. Also,remember my fellow geeks, just because all of the forum members are using computers doesn't mean they are comfortable being up to their elbows in the innards of a computer.
