Back around 2003, I bought an HP mini-tower for gaming (I was using Mandrake Linux on my other tower and my laptop). There was some crapware, to be sure, but what really upset me was the fact that the HD was 48% fragmented on first boot! Easy to fix, but your average luser would just complain about how slow their new box was. The disk should never have left the factory in that condition.

Nevertheless I would gladly buy another HP. Right now I have a Dell laptop that my dad gave me because it was getting old and had always been slow. I added 512MB of memory (proprietary and hard to find - thanks Dell!) for $30 and now it is pretty snappy for a six-year-old dinosaur.

I would never buy a Dell, though. Too many idiosyncrasies and outright failures encountered over the years - from the DOS days to the present - from both user and IT points of view.

I once had my PDA and digital camera stolen from my "safely" checked baggage. Thank God I took my laptop on board as a carry-on.