Dell laptops are ^&*#, i.e. not very good. Where I work we bought 100 of them. 100 of them just returned, love and hugs, the company.
Tosh seem to have the laptop market sawn up. My choice however would be Compaq, not the cheap ones though. Expensive it is, but it seems to last forever and all the Operating Systems detect what's in it (i.e. in some kit I could mention you receive 2 CD's and a floppy for all of those devices which Windows doesn't seem to understand, i.e. the laptop supplier has done it "on the cheap", not good me thinks).