I have my reservations about the build quality of Dell laptops. I'm using one now and it's all a bit flimsy feeling. It's brand new but the keyboard is rattly and feels cheap and nasty in use. Also, if you push, even very gently, on the back of the lid you can make the screen do nasty looking things. I wouldn't rate its chances if even moderate pressure were to be applied to it accidentally. In the past I've had IBMs, and currently have an HP-Compaq laptop, both of which are in a different league in terms of physical construction. Dell serve a purpose in that they'll do what's expected of the one I'm using now; provide a reasonably priced, bulk buy solution, intended to last a year or two until they're routinely replaced, but by which time they will likely really need replacing.
I looked around for a laptop for someone recently and whittled the choice down to a suggestion of two, an HP and an Acer. In spite of my leaning toward the extra quality likely to be found in big-name brands, in the end for the budget of £500 inc. VAT, the Acer won.
Both were around £485 inclusive and had the prerequisite of built in WLAN, but the Acer was impossible to ignore for having a 1.5GHz over a 1.4GHz Celeron-M processor, a 15.4" widescreen over a conventional 15", 512MB of RAM over 256MB, an 80GB over a 40GB hard drive and a DVD-RW drive over a CD-RW drive. The only downside being that it comes pre-loaded with XP Home rather than Pro, but that's easily sorted.
Reviews suggest the build quality to be more than adequate also.
It arrives with the buyer today and I'll have a chance to look at it over the weekend.
You'll no doubt need something with more processing power and graphics capability for game playing than is provided by that model, but I shall report back with regard to the overall quality of the brand. If it's good, then I imagine they'll be hard to beat on a spec' versus price basis.