I've never had anything other than Toshiba or Vaio and I plan on keeping it that way. The only problem I have with my Vaio is that my friend's kid thought it'd be a good idea to throw it and effectively ruined the cord... so now it doesn't charge the battery properly. There, also, a specific model that has problems with the fan that you'd have to look into first (I can't remember which model). Toshiba, there's a reason you hear a lot of good things about it.

I, personally, wouldn't recommend a Dell. Dell makes decent enough desktops but I've had nothing but bad experiences with Dells. For that matter, I've had nothing but bad experiences with Acers, as well.