my Win7 debacle

[microsoft windows]

Optiplex GX270's (in addition to the 280's you talked about) all have faulty capacitors in their motherboards that make them go bad right after the warrantee expires. I had to deal with them at work for a while.

Some other infamous creations with the Dell logo include numerous Pentium 4 Inspirons which overheated due to cheap design. A friend of mine has one and it's such a piece of cheap junk. OP, yeah, and I forgot to tell you all about those lovely exploding batteries from Dell too! Oh, and guess what? Dell knew about all this but still sold that hardware. Call that honesty!

I'm not buying a Dell. Ever.

[Langley]

I've had two Dell laptops where the casing started to crack and split the second they hit five years old. On one of them, the monitor's casing split so bad it's literally held together with duct tape. I hear they're much better with heat these days, but I'm still not gonna touch one.

[bigpook]

I have/had a Dell 510 laptop at work that I used for the past 4 years and it has held up pretty good. Its had a hard life, being turned on and off multiple times, crappy phone rooms with lots of dust. The occasional near miss with some diet pepsi : ) It  looks pretty beat up but still functions. The company is replacing them and I have a chance to buy it for 50 bucks. I may just do that just to have a beater laptop to play with at the house.

I recently got a Dell 1545 if only because it came with linux pre-installed. Aside from the shiny black plastic it does seem well made. I am using it at work until the new ones come in, but even then I will probably continue using my own. The corporate data guy doesn't get to touch it and I can basically spin it whichever way I want.