[DougofTheAbaci]

No, Dell is a good mid-range brand and if you buy one of their better laptops it will do rather well by you. However, ASUS has a better reliability rating (usually on par or sometimes even better than Apple).
 
As for uptime, I keep my computers for at least three years and while they're my main machine they run 24/7. Granted, for a few hours every night they sleep (but not always as I tend to run big downloads or processor-intensive tasks at night) but even then I average 15+ hours a day running since I'm a web designer and use it for my gaming, music and movies (TV is pointless in a digital age, to me).
 
And no brand is beyond faults. Even the best-made, high-end rig will break. Make it yourself or not. Parts fail. It happens. If you go stock form a good brand the trick is how they deal with it. ASUS is a company that does it very well. Apple is king of technical support. Dell and Sony can be jerks but usually do right by you in the end. If you can get HP to do it's job it's going to take a while. Lenovo is the same. Acer and the others are just horrible. Absolutely horrible.
 
If you were to buy a computer based solely on how well you were supported after purchase Apple would win every time. Everyone's had a computer with a dead pixel or two, right? Little dot on the screen that won't go away. My iMac had some and they were bugging me. I had time between contracts where I could go without my main machine so I called and asked if it was covered. Yep. Now I know for a fact that just about every other PC manufacturer has a minimum dead pixel policy. Apple's minimum is 1. You have one? We'll replace the screen. I dropped it off Saturday afternoon, picked it up Monday morning. Could have hit it up Sunday evening had I paid attention.
 
It's also the only computer company I've ever called where the person I talked to was an actual trained tech and not someone reading a script. I can't tell you how much that matters, whether you're tech savvy or not. If you are tech savvy it means you can tell them outright what's going on, they'll ask you one or two follow-up questions and it's a done deal. If you aren't tech savvy it means you just speak plain English and they'll take it from there.
 
One of the reasons I love my ISP so much is because I called them and said I was "rubber-banding in BC2" and the guy knew exactly what it was. While we were waiting for my connection to reset we talked about graphics cards and good RPGs. I love a company like that.

 

[Lurkumaural]

OP, it will behoove you to learn how to service your computers.  For just about every repair you will need a small set of screwdrivers (including Torx for some models) and maybe a pry tool, and those are mad cheap.  For the portables, especially considering you tend to have hard drive failures, perhaps invest in SSD drives since they involve no moving parts and it's possible yours are breaking due to the stress of movement/portability.  Some laptop models are gonna be a <5-minute hardware swap, others only slightly more so.  Even the most complicated jobs, due to a lot of screws and funny part placement, can be simplified if you're ready to view them as such.  I rather enjoy taking my laptops apart, thought not as much as other peoples', because theirs are a lot more fun.
 
Always have a backup somewhere; backup software is your best friend, especially when you think about how cheap an external desktop hard drive is.  Even a healthy full-functioning drive may have a data corruption, and restoring your data to a freshly formatted or even a newly replaced drive will save you a lot of trouble.  So important for Windows users, still important for the rest of us.
 
A lot of this has been said, but I'm adding my perspective nonetheless because you really can do better for yourself.
 
I know you're prone to fly off the handle sometimes.  And believe me, I know how much having to deal with a screwy computer can mess with your zen.  Arm yourself with some tools and some know-how and you'll be able to solve your problems before they can become something to really complain about.

 

[DougofTheAbaci]

People who don't backup their computers are asking to lose everything. It's only a matter of time. Back up regularly and test that backup just as regularly.

 

[Satellite_6]

Quote:

No.  You're doing or did something wrong.
 

No. Two windows laptops in my household have lost everything within a year of purchase. 
 
How can someone do something wrong with an OS? 
 
 

 

[Anaxilus]

Quote:

No. Two windows laptops in my household have lost everything within a year of purchase. 
 
How can someone do something wrong with an OS? 
 

Absolutely.  Most common thing folks do is probably download a **** link, email attachment and/or let a script run to have it's way w/ your system.   Most PC problems IME are usually self inflicted w/ the exceptional poor OS designs we've had in the past.  7 is solid.  I only have experience w/ 64 bit btw.  My favorite are people that click on the 'let me improve your PC performance' links on the internet.  Messing w/ your system files, registries or using a program that does it for you to 'enhance' your computer's speed.
 
How do you know it's the OS and not your hardware?
 

 

[appophylite]

Quote:

No. Two windows laptops in my household have lost everything within a year of purchase. 
 
How can someone do something wrong with an OS? 
 
 

 
Bad program installed somewhere that screws with the underlying files of the OS, bad program uninstalled incorrectly, bad internet browsing practices, allowing yourself to be the victim of malicious automatic installations to your computer through bad links, attachments, etc, or taking it for granted that your friend's flash drive/hard drive you borrowed doesn't have corrupt files on it that transfer to your computer....My average computer runs well for a good 5 years, before I come across something that accidentally corrupts it badly enough that I have to work on the OS to fix it - in the same amount of time, my Dad and mom can screw up 2-3 computers easily because they do not practice good computer practices when deciding what programs to install, using the internet, or properly maintaining upkeep on Anti-Virus. Windows 7 has been installed on 3 computers in our house to date and we've never had a problem with it. Windows 95, 98 and XP were on the majority of the computers we owned and any problems we had with them were usually the result of hardware eventually failing. The only two computers we've ever had substantial problems with are the two that used Windows Vista, but neither of those were mine, and I still attribute the majority of the problems we had with Vista to a bad hard-drive on one computer and bad usage practices on the other.
 
 

 

[Satellite_6]

I assume if it was a hardware issue my laptop would stop working altogether? No I don't click on those links lol. . . 
 
idk. 

 

[Happy Camper]

I've used Sony brand for my computer career and only had virus issues. My last laptop VGN-A190 has lasted (8 yrs) through ripping 1000+ cds, a few dozen VHS tapes, and I'm getting ready to transfer some laser discs and the only problems was dealing with Norton crap locking things up when I didn't upgrade their services. I have put Wndows7 on it and haven't had a problem since. I just got another Sony for browsing and headphone music and will leave the old Sony in the speaker rig for music and internet playback.

 

[Astrozombie]

Hard Drives fail, so pay up for an SSD or quit complaining. Also sometimes it's user error, the machines of today are fairly stable.

 

[Elysian]

SSD (NAND flash) technology is by no means significantly more reliable than disk drives.  If you're familiar with NAND flash technology, you'll know why the longevity of those devices gets more questionable the higher density you go, even with improved controllers.
 
http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/french_retailer_data_offers_ssd_failure_rates/
French Retailer Data Offers SSD Failure Rates
Solid state drives fail 2.05% of the time, according to data mined from a French retailer’s database. French site Hardware.fr mined the unspecified retailer’s internal sales and repairs database (Google translation) for failure rates on a variety of PC components (logic boards, video cards, RAM, etc.), and the results of that effort show SSDs failed 2.05% of the time, a number roughly comparable to that of traditional hard drives, which had a failure rate of 1.94%.
 
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/storage/ssd-reliability-lower-than-disks/1222
SSD reliability lower than disks?
By Robin Harris | December 21, 2010, 8:56am PST
Summary: Recent reports suggest that SSD’s are no more reliable than 1 TB hard drives. Given that few SSDs are 1 TB, the reliability per bit is much lower for SSDs. Why?

 

[appophylite]

Quote:

Hard Drives fail, so pay up for an SSD or quit complaining. Also sometimes it's user error, the machines of today are fairly stable.

SSD only protects you from an almost definite destruction of your hard drive platters if you accidentally drop the computer. The benefits of SSD over hard drives are to be found in thinner, lighter packaging and boot speeds. Otherwise, SSD, as Elysian says, is just as likely to be susceptible to corruption due to a bad read/write sensor/controller.

 

[appophylite]

Quote:

I assume if it was a hardware issue my laptop would stop working altogether? No I don't click on those links lol. . . 
 
idk. 

Not necessarily - My sister accidentally fell and snapped the motherboard on her ultralight once. Hard Drive and CPU worked fine and you could get the computer to start up. It couldn't hold together long though, so you'd only get about 10 minutes out of it before it shut down and needed to be restarted. Her other computer with Windows Vista on it had a bad hard drive to begin with. At first it only had a slow read/write speed (Think 10 minutes to copy about 1 GB of data), but it eventually led to a couple of corrupt sectors that finally shot the graphics display driver to hell. No amount of fiddling with the computer could solve the fact that the OS wasn't the real problem, it was the hard drive. We still have the laptop because my sister just went and bought a new one to play with and I have too much on my plate right now to spend the extra amount of time getting that laptop into working order anyhow. Some hardware issues will result in complete bricking of your laptop, but some software issues will too. Others are entirely fixable if you know what to look for or know enough figure out what questions to ask. However, it all leads to the same major issue: Computers are a collection of software and hardware. Some hardware and some software will play nice while others will not, and hardware, by its very nature, has to be expected to fail (Just because you want to spend $10,000 on a new laptop instead of $500 doesn't make the hardware any less likely to fail in all kinds of creative ways). Always keep a backup of all your data and multiple backups of really important data and you reduce the chances of losing all of your data when your computer may fail.

 

[DougofTheAbaci]

Windows itself is known to cause issues simply through normal operation. Go and ask a IT tech how much fun Vista was. It wasn't that uncommon to find out a dead drive was caused by something Vista had done.
 
Also, for those of you who don't know this, you don't have to click the links for it to download anything. You don't have to do anything at all. If you hit a page that is questionable, been hacked, makes a bad cookie call from an advert on the page... A dozen different thing. You'd be surprised at the damage you can cause by a bad cookie or temporary internet file. There's a reason I'm telling everyone to get Chrome: It's 100% sandboxed. If a file gets through Chrome to your computer it's because you did something.
 
And yes, SSDs have their own issues. They had a higher failure rate for a long time, and still do if you buy a bad brand. For Macs buy OWC SSDs and for everyone else it's Intel, Crucial or OCZ. Intel is the best maker of SSDs for PCs. They did have some minor firmware issues but that's been patched. The other issue all SSDs have is a maximum number of writes per sector. I think it's 1,000,000. However, someone did the math and in order to kill every last sector on a 240GB SSD you would have to write to it continuously at top speed for something like 10 years. Or, in other words, significantly more use than any normal person would ever get in the life of their machine. Oh, and yes, SSDs are significantly superior for mobile systems simple because they don't have any moving parts. Thus a drop is significantly less likely to break them. Heck, even setting down a laptop too hard or bumping it can be enough, over time, to break it. If the plater spins unevenly on any level it's lifespan drops dramatically.
 
But to reiterate what others have said, you'd be surprised the simple stuff you can do to kill Windows, even stuff that seems innocent. I'm not going to say OS X is all that much better (I think it is but that's personal bias) as every OS has it's own special brand of borkability. Though, that is one of the reasons I like Macs. I don't have to worry about calling one company about the OS and another about the hardware. It's one company. Doesn't matter what's broken, they will help me. It's why Macs are definitely the best choice for people who aren't tech literate (which, for the record, doesn't make them a bad choice for people who are).

 

[OneSec]

I don't entirely agree. As SSD are meant for cache or OS drive, they are much smaller capacity like normally 10% capacity of the spindle drive these days. If you compare 1TB spindle drive to a 120GB SSD, you get a longer life span per disk, using the per byte formula.
 
Also there figures are more for server usage, which has rapid read and write, which is an entirely different 'abuse' compare to OS drive for a PC / notebook. I read some reports from tomshardware - SSDs do have less TOTOL IO operations compare to spindle drives, and they did the maths based a home OS - it would normally last you like 5-8 years minimum. So that's talking about the total life span, rather than reliability and pre-mature break downs.
 
I don't think much people are using SSD for data drive these days, they cause a limb, so the weakness in larger capacity causing shorter life span issue may not be as significant now. But with all R&D efforts on SSD, I'm sure they will address this by the time 1TB SSD become common...
 
Okay back to real life, the one that I would really avoid is those "green / energy" spindle drives. I have terrible experience with them, I have 3 of those for about 2 years, and I have like 4-5 clashes, much more fragile then their performance / normal brothers. Those are definitely not fit for OS drive. I'm saving money right now to perhaps switch back to the normal spindle drives for my data.
 
 

 

[TheGomdoRi]

In my humble experience:

I stay away from Acer no matter what, because I've seen at least 3 of my friends have problems with Acer laptops and netbooks.
It wasn't really surprising to see your computer issues stemming from Acer products.
Where I reside, Acer products are usually 10-25% cheaper than the competing models (with roughly the same specifications) - and many people are inclined to purchasing them because of their accessible price-point.  However, their products from what I've seen are just terrible and would never recommend them to anybody. Personally I would just pay a bit more for a better lasting product.

The Toshiba was pretty surprising though.

 
P.S - Never lose hope in PCs!