I have never liked either brand and always managed to swing things towards dell if I had an input. Buying 200 plus units it was shocking the amount of duff ones or ones you had to tinker with to get working. Compaq used to be arses about garantees as well. Where as Dell used to just send me parts but that could have just been the sales rep which I knew quiet well after 4 large Y2K rollouts.
The compaq servers were always pretty poor built as well. I don't think any of the front facia plastic doors survived more than 2 months. Its going in a rack why cover idented buttons and status lights up?
And way you get what you pay for these days I think. Laptops I now buy from Acer and my desktop that I am building will be made out of self sourced parts. Yes it will cost a bit more than buying off the shelf but at least I can pay the extra for a decent chassi and PSU which doesn't take the skin off my knuckles. And also has the resources on it that I think are important and none of this filling up the ram slots so you have to replace the whole lot if you want to upgrade.