Personally, I have always used HP/Compaq laptops and have had a pretty good experience.
Current desktop replacement is an Evo N610 (obsolete now) with P4m 2.0, 512Mb, 30Gb drive.
The ebay HP marketplace (
http://stores.ebay.co.uk/HP-Marketplace-UK) is a good place to get remanufactured systems cheaply, but only two laptops there today.