[GeoffW]

When I looked after my companies PCs I went with Dell, largely as they bundled software and had better price/performance. However I was far from happy with the reliability, we had numerous HD and monitor failures, within 4 years 70% of monitors had blown up. The notebooks, which admittedly had a tough time, lasted well except for the HD.

Customer service for anything in computers is a hiding to nothing, Dell may be better than the rest but don't set your expectations too high and you wont be disappointed.

I lost faith with them after buying 3 notebooks and debating about wifi, only to find the month after I placed my order a new model arrived with wfi inbuilt and cheaper. Probably my fault for not asking, but that really ****ed me off. It's symptomatic of Dells bad approach to business, they are more geared to the latest and greatest so older parts are not around as long.

My experience with HP/Compaq has been great, good spec, build and low price. HP Customer service is much better but geared more toward medium to larger companies, this is where Dell struggle to compete with service.

My choice today would be HP, but if you're a small company it probably doesn't really matter!