For what it's worth...... have a mate who picked up his dell laptop with one hand when the cd bay wasn't occupied and it snapped! Ok I know you could say that the design isn't meant to be at it's strongest when there's a piece missing but there we go..... I don't think it would put me off buying a laptop from them in fact I know it wouldn't!
However -
Another oppo has a DELL desktop and I put some new RAM in it for him and was surprised to see so much plastic. Seems to me lots of corner cutting.