I have been happy with Dell over the past 10-12 years. My only complaint is that the final prices are not as low as you initially expect. The quality has been good.
The best quality PC I ever owned was an IBM PS2. It had a 10” color monitor, upgraded to 250K RAM and a 40M (supersized) hard disk. The 286 CPU was a little slow, with 1-2 wait cycles.
The 1988 street price for that model was $4500. I got a 50% discount buying it through my university. It ran Word for DOS and very little else. However, it just would not die, and no one would take it as a donation. Finally, I had to take it out of the basement and apply my 10 lb. sledge hammer.
Same here. (My employers for the past 15 years or so have all been 98% Dell shops.)
With only a few oopses along the way (The first black Optiplex cases, the GX260s with the bad electrolytic capacitors, a handfull of bad Maxtor and Seagate HDDs...) I have to say that I've been quite pleased with the Dells I work with.
Oh, and DELL INCLUDES A WINDOWS SETUP DISC WITH THEIR MACHINES!! I wish the others would learn.