Current laptop used at work is a HP and works great thus far after 1.5 yrs. Since china makes all our stuff now I’ll ignore your “not made in china” stipulation. :-)
HP has slipped in recent years though, in general, I'd agree with you. Had a Pavilion until 2008. In 2007 the power jack wriggled a fracture into the main board. I squeezed another year of life out of it by soldering the power wires directly to the motherboard (and re-soldering periodically).
Sony, to their credit, does not mount the power jack directly to the motherboard, though the jacks still suck. Power jack failure is what's plaguing this Vaio I'm using now. Oh, and there's the fact the left touchpad button no longer works (no dragging capability).