I've had good luck with Dell in the past and their reliability is somewhat better than Gateway according to CR.
Yeah, but I bet their customer service still sucks and their pricing policies a bit weird and wonderful (starting with their extortionate P&P rates and working your way back to the config wizard ..... ).
Personally, I wouldn't touch a Dell with a barge pole. Even if you gave me one for free.
HP (
NOT the cheap consumer-grade "Compaq" brand, like Cisco and Linksys etc. it's just not the same) is a much better bet.