My brother put 2 in the trash in less than 3 years. The techs they send to his house couldn't fix them. About 6 trips for the first one. They finally said enough and gave him a new one. It lasted less than a year and ended up in the dump. He went to a local PC shop and had one built from scratch to his needs. Awesome PC. Not one problem in a year. He bought his son a Gateway laptop and it was in the shop the first month. Power supply was bad. Took them 10 weeks to get it back to him. I have an Emachine that was free after all the rebates. 3 and a half years and still going strong. Not a peep out of it. Cable ISP, video and audio streaming is great.
I've been running only self built machines for several years now. It's really worth the challenge of building from scratch, as you learn the nuts and bolts of the whole thing.
And you get a kick ass machine that you already know how to upgrade and trouble shoot yourself.
"He went to a local PC shop and had one built from scratch to his needs."
I had a terrible experience doing that, several components didn't work, had trouble getting them to replace it, they didn't even install the operating system properly. I eventually found another place who corrected the problems.
That was when I decided to go with Dell, and I've been happy.
I've also had great luck and service with eMachines. I've had 3 and love them. Each successive PC was better than the previous one in so many ways.
a Gateway laptop and it was in the shop the first month.
Again, since these namebrands moved operations to China, their products are absolute garbage.